genesis 6 and 7 :: the flood begins

i cannot imagine the depth of the pain in God’s heart in preparing for the flood. i really wish there was some way that we could hear His voice in His conversations with Noah leading up to the flood. i want to be careful here not to place human limitations on Him, because it was out of both love and justice that this was getting ready to take place. humanity had abandoned Him, and traded in the knowledge of the incorruptable, immortal God for their own corrupt ideas and desires. the flood was an act of punishment just as much as it was an act of mercy.

if He would have let us continue down that road, there wouldn’t have been any hope left for us within a generation or two. Noah’s sons would have probably lived good lives, and maybe their children, but the breakdown would have probably begun there. too much distance would have come between them and their grandpa Noah. humanity would have failed completely, and at this point in genesis, there wasn’t much time left until it would.

“and noah did what the LORD commanded him.”

it is encouraging to see noah’s willingness to complete this project for God. the scope of it all probably kept him from truly feeling the impact of what was going to happen. God had given him a large enough project to stay busy with that the impending doom seemed like the more distant of the thoughts on his mind. it was the motivator -after God’s command- to complete the task at hand, but it was still the thing that would happen later, after he was done. so after the last coats of pitch were applied, and the last animals were coming in to load up, the weight of what was to come probably became more and more real.

sometimes God gives us projects to do or tasks to complete that feel like this. there is a lot of work to do, and the work on its own distracts us from what the end result will be. that can be both good and bad, depending on how we deal with what has been accorded to us. sometimes urgency compels us to share with others what God is doing, and that is usually good. it brings passion and conviction to what is said, and the hearer can grasp a sense of something coming. noah’s mocking neighbors must have started to get worried as the boat was nearing completion and animals started showing up on their own, especially the truly wild ones like hippos and lions.  sometimes, though, urgency keeps us from communicating with people about what God is doing in our lives. we are too absorbed in the task to communicate why we are doing what we are doing.

the effects of nose-in-the-book service do not spread far.  when people can see your passion, when they can see you have a purpose to your actions, that is when living for God become s infectious. people who just don’t understand God will see that light in your eyes and see that something good is going on…

passion without expression leads to sterility of the message. people have got to see that you are passionate about doing God’s work in your day to day life, or they will assume there is no importance or urgency to your message. let people see that there is indeed a day coming where their understanding of GOd’s purpose in their life is going to have an eternal impact, one way or the other. that doesn’t mean that you beat them over the head with your Bible on a daily basis, but it does mean that you express your desire to have them recieve the same salvation you have.