Flood - The Path From Ruin to Renewal

Monday, October 19th

We are still in the flood narrative, let’s pick up where we left off last week.

Read Genesis 7:22-24- 22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. 23 Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark. 24 The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

The state of the world is complete non-order, desolation, the only things still alive and that have breath are what is in the ark, Noah, family, and the animals. There they sit, “their” world covered in water, floating high above everything. Then notice the next line.

Don’t picture it like the next scene, imagine the narrator telling you the story, because that’s what is happening. The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days. Genesis 8:1-16a- But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. 2 Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. 3 The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, 4 and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible. 6 After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark 7 and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. 8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. 9 But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. 10 He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. 11 When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. 12 He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him. 13 By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. 14 By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry. 15 Then God said to Noah, 16 “Come out of the ark…”

There is quite a bit going on, we’ll touch on some things with our next point. But the first thing I want to draw your attention to is the time, not only the time, but the time Noah waited. Rains for forty days and forty nights, then the water sits for 150 days, then another 150 days the water begins to recede, it takes three months for the water to completely recede, then he sends out a few birds to get a survey of the land, which takes 40 days, then another week, and another week and when it is all said and done. Noah, his family, the animals were on the ark for an entire year.

Think about that for a second. Remember Noah was obedient and continued to do what God told him. But sitting on that ark, with the animals, in-laws, for a year. When God? When? How long do we have to wait? Just as much as he caused the cosmic collapse, couldn’t he speed up the process? Dry out the land a touch quicker? Why didn’t God act faster? Sooner? Why the wait?

How many of you like to wait? Wait in line? Wait in traffic? Wait at the doctor’s office? For some though, that’s nothing because your waiting has greater stakes. Waiting for a response from your boss. Waiting for the test results. Waiting for the right person to marry. Waiting to get pregnant. Waiting in pregnancy. Waiting for the next chapter in life. When it comes to waiting, I don’t think any of us like it too much.

I so appreciate how philosopher Lewis Smedes puts it. “Waiting is our destiny. As creatures who cannot by themselves bring about what they hope for, we wait in the darkness for a flame we cannot light. We wait in fear for a happy ending that we cannot write. We wait for a ‘not yet’ that feels like a ‘not ever.'”

What is your relationship to “waiting”? What is the struggle? What is the frustration? Can you have an honest conversation with God or trust “faith believing” friends around your struggle with waiting?

I would also encourage you, in the process, hold onto this song, as you wait. Promises