Genesis 8 - 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,[a] 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.
Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and there he
sacrificed as burnt offerings the animals and birds that had been approved for
that purpose. And the Lord was pleased
with the aroma of the sacrifice and said to himself, “I will never again curse
the ground because of the human race, even though everything they think or imagine
is bent toward evil from childhood. I will never again destroy all living
things. As long as the earth remains,
there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and
night.”
What strikes me right away about this passage is the
length of the ordeal. They were in that boat for over a year. Take just a hot minute to think about what
that would be like. This is Extreme
Quarantine: Noah Edition. I so identify with Noah’s “sending out a dove”
every so often to see if the worst is over yet.
During the worst of the pandemic, I wanted the answer to that question,
“it is safe yet?”
But I also see hope in this story. The larger overarching theme here is the
opportunity to start again. I imagine
what kinds of conversations would take place during a year-long confinement on
an ark. Some of those conversations would
have to be along the lines of, “if we have to start over, what would we do
different this time?”
I think this pandemic gives us the opportunity to have
some of those discussions and make plans to be a better human community on the
other side. It’s hard to see that in the
midst of the traumatic chaos all around us right now. But in that chaos we still get to choose
between despair and hope. Yes, hope is a
choice. And the ark and the
rainbow(Genesis 9) in this story reminds us that hope is the divine choice.
Prayer: God
show us the hope in the midst of our chaos. Amen
Prayer Focus:
Pray for the victims of the radical increase in domestic violence that
has taken place over the last 18 months.
Song: (More light-hearted today) Michael Bublé /
Barenaked Ladies / Sofia Reyes - Gotta Be Patient
