This time last year, we were in the middle of Snowmaggedon here– a several day storm that dropped 14” of snow, followed by nearly an inch of ice, a “once in a hundred years” storm, which hopefully will not be repeated any time soon. We’ll just have to make do with our usual storms, whose inches and inches of pounding rain result in river flooding every year, and whose high winds litter the ground with downed branches and trees.

Most places have their particular most-likely natural disaster. Children in the South and Midwest do tornado drills as frequently as fire drills at school. Residents of the Gulf coast and Eastern seaboard can cite the names of all the worst hurricanes of the last 50 years. Those living anywhere in the West can tell you that this last year has been one of the worst ever for wildfires. California has its many faults… um… earthquakes. To live along the Mississippi or Missouri Rivers is to be familiar with flood clean-up. The Texas economy has been devastated by drought for several years running now.

Did you ever notice how often people speak of these as something like “Mother Nature’s fury”? A malevolent intentionality is assigned. Although the specific victims are chosen at random, the general death and destruction are ascribed to being somehow deliberate. Speaking strictly scientifically, of course, such anthropomorphism is baseless; these events are simply the product of entirely impersonal and emotionally neutral physical forces at work. Going through them, though, it feels like there’s more behind it. There is – but not what the world thinks.

I recently finished memorizing the fourth paragraph in Romans 8, and I’ve been pondering on how it relates to this issue. Paul would neither agree with the scientists nor buy into the school of thought that “Mother Nature is out to get us”. In verses 19-22, Paul says “For Creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the Creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him Who subjected it, in hopes that Creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. And we know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth until now.”

Paul, then, does not speak of the created world as a scientist would, an impersonal collection of physical forces, but, indeed, as an entity to itself. Yet he does not refer to a name such as “Mother Nature”, either, since that name implies that IT is responsible for bringing to life the rest of the world. Rather, he rightly names the entity “Creation”, a name that clearly acknowledges that rather than being the source of life, it is itself the product of a Creator.

And why did God make the Creation? All of the first six days of creation were building up to the introduction of God’s highest creation – Adam and Eve, uniquely created in the image and likeness of God and designed for fellowship with Him. Creation was brought into being for the purpose of sheltering, nurturing, feeding, caring for and being cared for by the children of God, to rejoice in its productivity, to be ever bountiful, to be ever perfectly suited to man’s needs.

Then came the Fall – and man was not the only one to suffer the consequences of it. Creation became “subjected to futility”. Rather than everything working like it should, everything became pointless because Creation is in “bondage to corruption” or “decay” or “failure” depending on the translation. No matter which word is used, the sense is that Creation was forced into a condition where it is spiraling downward to chaos. It’s coming apart at the seams. Rather than nurturing and providing for us, Creation often disables and destroys us. Storm and tempest, earthquake and fire, all manner of natural disaster – Creation is as unhappy to be perpetrating them on us as we are to experience them. Although all of these things are still in God’s sovereign hand, and He still works in them for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose, Creation mourns its role in the destruction of itself and of those it was created for.

But one day…. One glorious, wonderful day, Creation itself is going to be set free from its bondage. Just as in Adam and Eve’s fall Creation, too, was enslaved, so, too, in the redemption of the children of God will Creation be freed. We will not live redeemed in some ethereal heaven, disembodied and floating on clouds. We will have new bodies – changed, transfigured, like His glorious body – real bodies, and we will live on a new earth – a real place, changed, transformed and at last freed from the power of sin. Our liberation day will likewise mark the liberation of Creation!

When the wind howls and branches creak, when the earth heaves and volcanoes spew ash, when drought parches or flood drowns, that isn’t “Mother Nature” venting her wrath. It is Creation groaning “as in the pains of childbirth” while it waits with us for the day when futility, decay, corruption, and death will be behind us, the day of the revealing of the glory of the children of God.