Noah’s Ark
The story of Noah is
all too familiar to Christians and Christians-to-be. This year, it will even
appear on the big screen in a Hollywood motion picture starring Russell Crowe. (Trailer here) And a few years ago, the story was used to inspire the comedy “Evan Almighty”.
It is an awesome tale,
because it seems miraculous to the extent that people cannot fathom it. Many
things have been said about it; there have been debates and, more often than
not, the world raises its bushy eyebrow in disbelief.
After the corruption of
Adam and Eve, the world developped into an utterly sinful society. Humans had
free will and turned to every evil imaginable.
Amongst this mayhem,
God called out Noah to build an Ark. This wasn’t just a tiny boat...it was
HUGE! There is even a person today who tried to replicate it. (Video here) And
when you read the passages, our 21st century minds are focused on
the “HOW” of this story. How could it be possible to transport all those
animals?
But reading through
Noah’s tale again, one finds so much more in it...which you may have missed as
a child in Sunday school. It talks about God’s first covenant with
mankind...our first insurance that WE will be spared. And the metaphors for
life are endless:
1.
Noah works
night and day to build this ship, not fully knowing whether he is wasting his
time. Just like Evan in the “Evan Almighty”, he probably was mocked and
ridiculed for being insane. But he knew how to trust God. And that was good
enough.
2.
All
(land-) animals were to be on that ark. Together with humans. ONE BIG HAPPY
FAMILY. God has placed us all in the same boat. Whenever there are (natural)
disasters in the world, we can say the goodness in man’s heart shine through.
He turns away from evil to preserve the GOODNESS of the world. We save the
creatures we were asked to care for. We love our neighbours. Even if this
happens for a short period, we recognize the capacity for goodness...for the
scenario of the ark to be TRUE.
3.
We are
forced to wait. The floods come upon the earth for 40 days. This number is so
significant in the Bible, because it recurs. God’s people wander through the
desert for 40 years. The waiting time for God’s promise appears to increase. Later
in Genesis 15:13, the Lord declares:
"Know
for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a
country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there.”
We
might be waiting on God to answer our prayers, but we can be assured that He
will answer them. Noah had to wait another 150 days until he could step out of
the ark. And when he did, a rainbow covered the sky. God declared the rainbow
as sign of his new covenant:
9 “I now establish my covenant with you and
with your descendants after you 10 and with every
living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild
animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on
earth. 11 I establish my covenant with you: Never
again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will
there be a flood to destroy the earth.” (Genesis 9:9-11)
These are just 3
metaphors I picked up. But after Noah’s tale, things do not change for the
better either. Humanity returns to its evil ways. And this time there is
arrogance.
Tower of Babel
When the people decide
to get together and build the massive tower of Babel, in order to reach the
heavens...they do so for their own good. They believed that they could achieve
great things without God’s help. To reach His level with a man-made tower.
Pride clouded their judgement of the situation. And God destroyed their
arrogance. He literally brought them down from cloud number 9.
The other day I read
an article in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, about the relation
between a nation building high towers and stock market crashes. It seems far
too coincidental that there is a relation at all.
The irony in the tale
of the “Tower of Babel” is that humans all spoke a common language. And God
decided to change that...to prevent us from ever coming together as ONE and
achieving impossible feats.
And when you look
around yourself and see what humans have achieved in the last centuries,
despited there being language barriers and cultural
differences...obstacles...etc. one truly has to believe that God achieved the
impossible. He almost challenged us to achieve similar things, but with more
difficulties.
Of course, evil has
remained a companion to every chapter. But it is God’s GOODNESS IN and THROUGH
US that has had the upper hand. He holds the trump card. We have built
cathedrals, temples, churches, houses, entire nations in HIS name.
Genesis is not an
ancient collection of stories. Genesis is here...happening to us NOW. We just
have to ask God to help us comprehend it.
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