Monday, November 28, 2016
But God remembered Noah and
all the wild animals and livestock with him in the boat. He sent a wind to blow across the earth, and
the floodwaters began to recede. The underground waters stopped flowing,
and the torrential rains from the sky were stopped. So the floodwaters
gradually receded from the earth. After
150 days, exactly five months from the time the flood began, the boat
came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. Two and a half months later, as
the waters continued to go down, other mountain peaks became visible. After another forty days, Noah
opened the window he had made in the boat and released a raven. The bird flew back and forth until the
floodwaters on the earth had dried up. He also released a dove to see if
the water had receded and it could find dry ground. But the dove could
find no place to land because the water still covered the ground. So it returned to the boat, and Noah held out
his hand and drew the dove back inside. After waiting another seven days,
Noah released the dove again. This time the dove returned to him in the
evening with a fresh olive leaf in its beak. Then Noah knew that the floodwaters were
almost gone. He waited another seven days and then released the dove
again. This time it did not come back. Noah
was now 601 years old. On the first day
of the new year, ten and a half months after the flood began, the
floodwaters had almost dried up from the earth. Noah lifted back the covering of the boat and
saw that the surface of the ground was drying. Two more months went by, and
at last the earth was dry! Then God said
to Noah, “Leave the boat, all of you—you and your wife, and your sons and
their wives. Release all the animals—the birds, the livestock, and the
small animals that scurry along the ground—so they can be fruitful and multiply
throughout the earth.” So Noah, his
wife, and his sons and their wives left the boat. And all of the large
and small animals and birds came out of the boat, pair by pair. Genesis 8:1-19(NLT)
Most pictures I’ve ever seen
depicting Noah and his family leaving the ark show them stepping back into
Eden. There’s always a beautiful rainbow
in the sky and the earth is covered with flowers and beautiful trees and grass;
it’s perfectly lovely, even the animals have smiles on their faces.
How naïve! This had been the mother of all storms!
The earth had been wrecked, and the evidence of death and debris must have
been overwhelming. The damage from the 2005
Indonesian tsunami would be mild compared to what Noah’s family was facing.
In Genesis 7 we learn that
the storm was relatively short – just 40 days of torrential rain, and the
waters bursting up from the ground destroying everything. But it took Noah 7½ more months to open the
window and peek-out! Even then he could
only see mountain peaks sticking out of the water. It took nearly 5 more months for the ground
to dry-up. Finally God told Noah to
leave the ark and begin this new beginning.
There is a pattern here that
is useful for us when we face our storms of loss. God gave Noah and his family many months of
darkness to remember the cost of how his generation had forsaken God and made
the culture a stench in God’s nostrils.
He also gave them months
after the storm, and before the floodwaters receded, to contemplate what they
would do when, and if, they could return to a more normal existence.
The pattern is evident: the
bigger the storm, the longer the process of recovery.
When we experience loss the
recovery process is somewhat different for each person, because we see things
differently, and react according to our personality and culture. But the mainframe of recovery operates on the
scale of time for everybody. All the
losses of life include a time for reflection on what (or who) has been lost,
and a time of contemplation about how life will make sense after the storm has
passed. And then there is that time
when, if you are listening, you will hear God say… now leave this behind – go and be fruitful.
For You Today
If you’re not going through
the storm, or plodding through the aftermath’s destruction, just tuck these
little thoughts away. You’ll need them
someday.
If you are dealing with a loss,
keep trucking…keep releasing ravens and doves…keep listening…the storm happened…but
the waters aren’t forever.
NOTES
[i]
Title image: AusAID [CC
BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia
Commons
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