by Co-Pastors Paul and Marian Boyd

       Every year around this time, we arrive at the season in which “behold, the winter is past/The rain is over and gone./The flowers have already appeared in the land;…/And the voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land.” (Song of Solomon 2:11-1). Spring is a reminder of the time when life first sprang into being, when “God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). God spoke Earth’s land and waters into being, and set the sun, moon, and stars in the skies above His creation. He covered the earth with “plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind” (vs 12). He filled the waters with “swarms of living creatures” (vs.20), created birds to glide through “the open expanse of the heavens” (vs 20), and caused the land to be filled with “cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth” (vs. 24). Lastly, he created us human beings, assigning us to “rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” (vs. 24)    

       Sadly, we botched our responsibility, and brought curses onto the earth, the world that God had created for our pleasure. The garden that had contained “every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food” (Genesis 2:9) was replaced by “both thorns and thistles” (Genesis 3:18). The fruits and vegetables which we had been able to pick and eat freely would now be available only by “the sweat of your face” (Genesis 3:17 and 19). Our lives would become, like the land of Narnia under the spell of the white witch, a time of “always winter and never Christmas”^* (CS Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe).

       But thanks to the Christ who was “chosen before the creation of the world” (1 Peter 1:20), the Creator is continually re-creating us. “Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). Eventually, we will receive glorified bodies to enclose our transformed souls. “It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:42-44).

       When this transformation occurs, the earth which we cursed will be recreated as well. God will bring about “a new heaven and a new earth” (Revelation 21:1). In it, “there will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it …. And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them; and they will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:3-5).