Time At Hand

Noah and his three sons and their mother and wives lived on a 450' long, 75' wide and 45' high 'boat' for over 1 year. They were responsible to care for themselves and all of the animals in the known world; which, at the time, were all of the animals they had with them. All other living creatures had been destroyed. The flood waters must have been filled with the carcasses of hundreds of thousands of creatures. The dead bodies of dogs, cats, birds, horses, monkeys, yaks, goats, sheep, pigs, men, woman, children and babies would have floated and rotted and all over the earth. That is not the picture we see in the Sunday school hand-outs we give to our children. But that is the reality.

We commonly hear about the safety of the arc during the storm. But rarely if ever do we actually hear about or consider for ourselves the realities of this story. The are may have been the safest place on earth during that awful year. But it would not have been a pleasant place to be by any stretch of the imagination. The daily barrage of visual horror outside, on the water, would certainly have turned the stomaches of the 8 people on board. Only the most calloused, uncaring person could go unaffected.

The amount of work for those 8 must have been overwhelming. Just imagine, for instance, the daily task of distributing fresh water to each of those animals. Each day, without a day off, for over a year, someone needed to rise each morning, choke past the smell and vision of death all around, grab a bucket of water and hall it to the baboon, screeching and jumping around in it's cage. Every so often, someone would need to shovel out the dung from the stable of horses and mules and donkeys and zebras. Where did all of that waste go? My guess is that it went out a chute or other small opening, above the waterline and into the murky ocean of death outside. The ark may have been safe, relatively speaking, but it surely wasn't a fun place to be.

So what does that tell us about God's “shelter from the storm” for us? Can it be that God will save us from death but not always in a pleasant manner? Surely that is a conclusion that can be drawn. Noah and the seven people with him may not have been on the equivalent of a Caribbean pleasure cruise, but the alternative wasn't a good choice by far.

But God's safety was brought to Noah more than 100 years earlier. Noah had a generous amount of time to prepare. God's provision came with ample amounts of time. Plus, the very thing that gave the opportunity to Noah in the first place was Noah's habit of spending time with God and abiding by the knowledge of life that time spent with God provides. What conclusion does that lead too? It seems obvious. The time needed to prepare for the most cataclysmic events in life is available to us right now. The time is “at hand.” How will you spend it?

Bogged Down In Details

When Noah received the instructions to build a boat he must have been overwhelmed by the gravity of what was going to happen. He would have wrestled with understanding the immense project that he was given to undertake. The macro view of this project would have staggered the mind of anyone. The facts of this project were simple enough. The world was to be destroyed by a flood. Noah was to build a very large boat. A selection of animals was to be housed in the boat for protection from the flood. When it was all done there would only be Noah, his wife, his sons and his sons' wives.

Some specific details regarding how the boat was to be built were given as well. These details were sufficient enough to get the boat building project started but not detailed enough to specify how each board and nail were to be set. Noah would need to determine such details on his own or he would need to delegate those specifics to someone he trusted, with the knowledge to get that part of the project accomplished.

Noah's main job in this huge effort was to focus on God's voice. He needed to continue to communicate with the Almighty one who gave him the task to begin with. H needed to focus on trusting the future outcome, knowing that God is true to his word. He did not need to get bogged down in detail work himself. God's special knowledge about the “hows” and “whens” would be left to God. Noah only need concern himself with the next task on the list of things to do.

Noah could have begun thinking about how the animals would be gathered together. Maybe he could have done a little research on animal behavior. He might have begun questioning how all of those animals would arrive in his back yard. How would he and his sons herd this menagerie onto this enormous boat? The scripture says each species went on to the boat according to it's kind. So there must have been some way to segregate animals into manageable categories. There needed to be some way of distributing food eventually to each individual animal.

Noah trusted God to bring the animals to the ark. He trusted God that he'd be provided the skills required to build a completely organized floating barn that would sustain all of this life for as long as God required. Trust and obey. Noah's only foreknowledge was that God was in control.

We often get bogged down in the minutiae of the task at hand. We understand the project. We possess the skills to accomplish the deed. We know the people to contact to find information about the skills we are fuzzy on. But often we wait for every detail of the project to be well defined and thought over before we begin. God doesn't require us to possess absolute surety about the tasks he gives us to do. After all, the very thing required to communicate with God in the first place is faith. God commands us to have faith. Faith, the evidence of unseen things, calls us to believe that the outcome will be accomplished while the details are left unknown.

We build a relationship with the creator of all things. We here his voice in thoughts and urgings. We understand the task. But often times we sit, thinking about details and questioning the wisdom of the project. What we should do is take the specifics we do have, as incomplete as they may be, and get started knowing that the God of mystery, knowledge and wisdom will “bring the animals in” when the time is right.

No Doubt

November 1, 2005

Faith. How can you “just believe” something? What kinds of experience do you need to have with someone to believe that an event will happen or a condition will come to be based upon what they tell you? Imagine the situation for Noah. We find in Noah a man who's lifestyle and who's daily walk was so in step with the Lord that the Lord called him righteous. The Lord found him to be blameless among all the people of his time. It's good that Noah walked with God every day because God told Noah a frightening story. God told Noah that everyone except his immediate family would soon die.

The bible is not specific enough to tell us exactly how many people Noah knew. It does not tell us how many other family members of Noah were living during that time. It would seem logical that he would have had brothers and sisters. He might have had aunts and uncles living at that time too. The Lord told him that they would all die. His friends would die. The people on the street that he saw every day would die too. As a matter of fact, according to the biblical account every person he had ever seen in his entire life would all be dead except for his wife, his three sons, and his sons' wives.

All of the animals save those he took with him would perish. The houses and farms and shops and stores would all be completely destroyed. The meadow and the grove and the hollow and the field and all of it's beauty would no longer exist. A massive flood of water would completely take it all away.

Nothing like this had ever happened before. There were no leading indicators in the stock market of life to suggest that “Oh. Yes, I've seen this once before. It's likely that a flood is going to occur.” By all accounts we can probably say it had never even rained before! Further, God tells Noah to build a huge boat on the scale of the Queen Mary for those times. Incredible! There is no history in Noah's time to give him any confidence in what he was about to do. None whatsoever. Yet Noah, with the simple faith of a child doing his mother's bidding, puts in place plans to accomplish the task one timber, one board, one nail at a time every day for a hundred or so years, slowly building a monstrosity in his back yard. He couldn't hide this from anybody. His faith was put on display for the whole world to see for over a hundred years.

What kind of faith do you have? Let's say you wake up today and you feel impressed by God during your morning prayers to paint your house bright orange. All of it. Orange siding. Orange shingles. Orange doors, windows, shutters, and trim. Do you think you would do it? What do you think your neighbor would say? Would he ask you something like, “Hey there. I see that you are painting your house orange. Um... what in the world are you doing that for?” Would you say, “God told me to.” Or would you make up a different story?

The strength of your faith will indicate your willingness to go beyond the call of the normal. Your faith can only be built bit by precious bit through the investment of time. There simply is no other way to build it. Investing time in someone will slowly define how much trust in things not yet seen you are willing to have in what they say. Each of us can predict the future in some respect. Simply stating “I'll be there at four o'clock this afternoon to pick you up.” is a prediction of a future event. If you say that every day for thirty days and if you never fail in that task, it's reasonable to believe the same thing will happen the thirty first day. The time has been invested. The history has been written. The by-product is faith.

Noah walked a righteous life on a daily basis with God. He talked with God and he listened. Every day. Probably many times each day. Maybe continuously during the day. Maybe he never stopped communicating with God. There must have been an tremendous amount of time spent together for Noah to have even a glimpse of the faith it required to build that boat. He couldn't harbor even a speck of doubt that this would not happen. He couldn't. He couldn't because his faith told him otherwise. He needed to have absolute faith.

We each have a choice about every minute of our lives. God is willing to communicate with you at a heartbeat's notice. If you lack faith, begin investing time in that conversation. Begin reading his word each and every day without fail. You will be amazed at the vision it can provide. I don't know that you will ever have the faith to build a monument to a conversation to God like the arc would have been. But I do know that your life will be hugely blessed. I have that faith. I have that faith because I've experienced it in my own life. Try it for thirty days and see for yourself. Your life will be better. Of that I have no doubt.

God Spoke

God spoke. Out of his mouth came words. Powerful words. Words that created the earth out of water. The water was created by his word. How much power does a word have? God's words have ultimate power; the power of creation, the power of love, the power of comfort, the power of condemnation. His power is demonstrated in word. He is effortless in his ability to accomplish anything because all He needs to do to produce anything, physical or spiritual is to speak. His word is pure power.

We speak quickly and often. Our words stream forth in a never ending flow about everything we see. Our opinions are made sometimes quickly and often without thought. Why don't we take a minute to tap into God's power? We have the resource at our disposal. We also have a choice. The power of God to speak and solve our problem, answer our question, make our path clear is ever present. But we must chose to do two things. 1. Approach God with an open heart and mind knowing that He will give help. 2. Listen.