Moving to the tropics has introduced us to new plants, insects, and animals. We’ve also encountered weather we never faced in the Midwest, on the prairie, in the Rockies, or on the high desert. The most surprising event so far has been the arrival of sand from the Sahara Desert – a desert nearly the size of the continental US.

Every year, it’s a normal event for sand from this enormous desert in northern Africa to be picked up as small particulates of dust, blown and carried across the Atlantic, and then deposited on our gulf coast city after swirling around the coast.

As I write today, the sky appears to be white, and the light is altered and refracted, for the sand came in last weekend, and another heavier “batch” is arriving here this weekend. Tons and tons of sand in the form of dust about 1/10 the width of a human hair now fill our air and settle on our land.

However, the majority of the Saharan dust lands on the tropical rainforests of South America. The oxygen supply for our entire planet comes from the large rainforests that exist in South America and Africa, as well as from marine life. This is but one reason why the health of our rainforests and oceans is so crucial.

Roughly one-third of the earth’s oxygen is produced by the rainforests. The Saharan dust borne on the wind currents and filling our air contains the exact amount of phosphorous needed by the South American rainforests, thus fertilizing them.

God is the Creator and the supreme Gardener. None of this is an accident. He fertilizes the rainforests of South America with Saharan dust, carrying it on the jet stream all the way from Africa for this very purpose. Thus, through his loving care, he provides our oxygen and keeps our planet habitable.

God is the Creator and the supreme Gardener. None of this is an accident. He fertilizes the rainforests of South America with Saharan dust, carrying it on the jet stream all the way from Africa for this very purpose. Click To Tweet

Season after season comes and goes. The climate rises and falls through epochs of heat and epochs of cold. Yet God remains. God superintends.

God gave the stewardship of the earth into the hands of humanity in the Garden of Eden. To us came the responsibility of tending the earth, cultivating it, using its resources, and maintaining the land and the water – we recycle, we reforest, we pollute as little as possible, we care for our planet. This is our responsibility. The rest belongs to God.

God loves us, and he is sovereign over all. He keeps our little blue planet within his hands, habitable and welcoming until the day he returns to make everything new again. Have no fear. If God can fertilize the oxygen-producing rainforests with phosphorous borne in desert sand from the other side of a wide ocean, carrying it over to deposit exactly where needed, he can take care of us.

Have no fear. If God can fertilize the oxygen-producing rainforests with phosphorous borne in desert sand from the other side of a wide ocean, carrying it over to deposit exactly where needed, he can take care of us. Click To Tweet

The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,
the world and those who dwell therein,
for he has founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the rivers.
Psalm 24:1-2 NIV

The heavens are the Lord’s heavens,
but the earth he has given to the children of man.
Psalm 115:16 NIV