Hope with Creation
Amos 9:11 – 15
“The time is surely coming, says the Lord,
when the one who plows shall catch up with the one who reaps
and the treader of grain with the one who sows the seed;
the mountains shall drip sweet wine,
and all the hills shall flow with it.”
– Amos 9:13, NRSVUE
Harvest for modern humans often means produce that we can consume or sell. For plants and other creatures, though, this stage offers more than food. It means new seeds for seed-bearing plants that have the potential to yield new plants. It means a new generation of botanical and animal creatures have a chance to live, and ecosystems have a shot at continuing to survive.
Amos’s harvest imagery in this passage resonates with this ecological posture of hope for the future. Through images of reaping crops combined with the people being “plant[ed],” “never again [to] be plucked up” (v. 15), Amos illuminates how the people’s future is tied to plants’ future. The people’s hope, in a way, involves hoping with creation.
As reasons to give up hope multiply before us today, plants are still making new seeds all around us. Isn’t it time to hope with them?
What might hoping with creation look like for you?
Get the “Advent with the Earth” Devotional PDF
Credits
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version updated edition of the Bible
Image of grapes with leaves is by John Cameron on the Unsplash website
