The blink of an eye

This piece of information out of Japan got a lot of attention over the weekend:

The powerful earthquake that unleashed a devastating tsunami Friday appears to have moved the main island of Japan by 8 feet (2.4 meters) and shifted the Earth on its axis.

Most people will simply marvel at this geological feat, then move their attention on to the next video by Charlie Sheen or something. But it's worth pondering for a moment...

This violent hiccup by the earth is yet another reminder that uniformitarian theories about the age of the planet are not reliable. Case in point: one of many different processes geologists refer to when estimating the age of the earth is that of 'continental drift,' or the shifting of tectonic plates. By gauging the present rate of movement, then projecting this back to the point where all the continents were supposed to have been one large land mass, one gets a certain period of years.

It should be obvious such a calculation doesn't take into account 8-foot hopscotches by entire islands. Even if one is generous and supposes the current rate of movement is more of an average, this is still making quite the assumption given the time periods allegedly involved.

As with Mount St. Helens thirty-plus years ago, we're finding the earth can turn itself inside out with amazing rapidity. And that's just a normal result of a creation cursed by sin and decay. Such glimpses should give us pause to wonder about the potential for catastrophe if the Creator removed even more of the common grace...

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.

That was no gentle rain that accumulated over forty days -- it was, almost literally, all hell breaking loose from above and below. We were promised such a worldwide flood would never occur again and indeed, it hasn't. But as noted yesterday, creation itself groans under the weight of corruption and sin. We are told that one day--no one knows the time--those 'birth pains' will reach a crescendo unlike anything ever seen, but that on the far side of that lies a renewal both of God's people and His creation.

"Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus!"