Years ago as a 7-year-old I was captivated by the convention of crows gathering between Grandpa Henry’s farm and cousin Johnny’s farm to the north. There were woods there, interspersed with cornfields reduced to their winter stalks. I wondered as I wandered there what the crows were saying to each other as they carried out their raucous business of collecting food from the snow-covered fields.

Perhaps yesterday I began to understand.

As Julia and I drove south to Valatia, we drove through the corn and hayfields of our beloved Upstate New York farmland.

And there were the crows! They were doing the same kind of business they had done for…ages. The scene reminded me of my boyhood and something else.

The crows reminded me of the timelessness in God’s care for us.

Evil is here and it messes with us continually, pressing changes upon us that bring fear, disillusionment, regrets and resentments in the doorway to our lives. But those things are so momentary and seem to play out on the media-generated surface of our lives. There is a deeper, older truth, an ancient reality centered in the omnipresent reality of the One the Scriptures call the Ancient of Days.

The truth of God’s age-less, sovereign working can be glimpsed in the crows doing the same thing today they did 100 years ago… a 1000 years ago,,, millennia ago. The snow-blanketed cornfields they return to year after year represent the hills, streams, woods and wind that frame this glorious creation of God (Psalm 104).

The returning crows speak of a God who is above, ahead, behind and on all sides, working out His glorious purposes. In fulfilling His plan for good and glory He is undisturbed by the silly flash-in-the-pan cultural elites or puffy, power-hungry politicians – and undeterred by the momentary troubles of my short life.

Thank God for the crows!

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. ¹⁷ For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, ¹⁸ as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18 ESV

Daniel answered and said:

“Blessed be the name of God forever and ever,
    to whom belong wisdom and might.
²¹ He changes times and seasons;
    he removes kings and sets up kings;
he gives wisdom to the wise
    and knowledge to those who have understanding;
²² he reveals deep and hidden things;
    he knows what is in the darkness,
    and the light dwells with him.

Daniel 2:20-22 ESV