“It’s just what it does.”

You know what I mean…

One year we’re praying for rain and fruitful pastures, then simply praying for sustenance until the next spring. The next year we’re smiling ear to ear and praying for a window of dry weather to get the hay crop in.

One minute, Brad and Dave are racing like mad to get hay baled, the next minute we’re camping out in the calving shed while a hailstorm wears itself out overhead.

One hour I’m cleaning up the damage done to my garden from the golf-ball-sized hail, though thankful it wasn’t worse. The next, I’m finding a beautiful egg from my new flock of pullets, and candling an egg my broody hen is working on to find it is viable and developing!

One hour I find out that my beautiful Amelia-cat died overnight for no known reason. The next, I see twin antelope babies out along our driveway while on my morning run.

It just does that sometimes. Life and death paired. Struggle and blessing. Fruitfulness and failure. Fear and peace. Sadness and gladness. A chaotic intermingling of things that feel like contradictions.

The struggles are a reminder of our sin. “Cursed is the ground” because of our inherited sin, and natural disasters, whether small or large in scale, are a reminder of that first storm, the one that covered the earth in a flood of judgement. Death is likewise a reminder of our sin, that we don’t live in a perfect world, and this isn’t where we ultimately belong.

But at the same time, the storms are a reminder of God’s mercy, how He protects and that it is He who provides, especially when the hailstorm like we had two days ago leaves relatively little damage. And the fruit of our cultivating – be it flocks of chickens or herds of cows or a fruitful garden – are a reminder also of God’s grace and mercy and providence. And life – wild or tame – is also a reminder of God’s goodness and kindness to us, and His love for His creatures, human and animal.

“It’s just what it does.”