And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years…and it was so.

(Gen 1.14)

The Lord..said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures…As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”

(Gen 8.21&22)

Praise the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendour and majesty. He wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters. He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind. He makes winds his messengers, flames of fire his servants….The moon marks off the seasons, and the sun knows when to go down…How many are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures..May the glory of the Lord endure for ever; may the Lord rejoice in his works – he who looks at the earth, and it trembles, who touches the mountains, and they smoke. I will sing to the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.

(Ps 104)

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created..He is before all things, and in him all things hold together..he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fulness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

(Col 1.15-20)

A friend recently observed that while we believe and trust in the Saviour who has made us members of his kingdom – an eternal and unshakeable one – yet we are still also time-bound human creatures, and therefore live with a strong tension between the ‘now and the not yet’. We know the truth of our hope for life after death, and of our Lord’s sovereignty, but the circumstances of our planet, our nation, our immediate condition, press so inevitably and strongly on our consciousness that we must pay attention to them too.

In this tension which runs through our lives as believers, I find great comfort in observing the unmistakeable hand of God in sustaining the laws and rhythms which govern the created things. The same God who established his kingdom through Jesus, is the one who called into being the galaxies and who rules the motion of every star and planet by his own immutable law. I can see the latter, while I cannot begin to understand them, and I am reassured  in my citizenship of the former!

I consider the moon and the sun, which between them exert such incredible power over our planet – power designed and instituted by God to sustain our lives as they drive our climate, our seasons, our very days and nights. Without his intimate and mind-boggling control over the details of physics, and his faithful upholding of the underpinning laws, we would be without hope. And as I consider that through all the millenia of known history, God has chosen to sustain those patterns and rules – in the face of the rebellion of his creatures – I am humbled and awed into profound thankfulness for his sustaining mercies.

As we continue to live through days of restriction and with levels of uncertainty not known in the prosperous and peaceful UK for over 50 years – though sadly too familiar to millions around the world – I put my confidence and trust in the God who says each day to the sun, ‘Shine!’, and to the mighty oceans, ‘Rise and fall’. He has upheld his creation through untold years, and has promised that until all his children are gathered in, the rules will be kept. His grace is truly designed to lead us to repent and depend on him, he desires that none should perish. The rule-maker is also the Rule keeper – the Lord above all, in whom all things are held together and for whose glory they exist. I rejoice to know and be known by one who is so utterly dependable, and so full of compassion towards his creatures that he holds back his just judgement, and sustains their lives, in order that they might come to know and love him.