Noah - Peacemaker

After a break, I'm back to writing my journal - and I want to finish up the seven days of thinking about Noah.

As in many of the stories in the bible, the final concept is peacemaking. So it goes with the story of Noah:

Noah also said, “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem. May God extend Japheth’s territory; may Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be the slave of Japheth.”

After the flood Noah lived 350 years. Noah lived a total of 950 years, and then he died.

There are the statements that Canaan will be a slave to his brothers (see my last post), but there are also blessings towards Shem and Japheth.

- Praise to the Lord, the God of Shem (the older son)
- May God extend Japheth's territory (the middle son)
- May Japheth live in the tents of Shem

In essence, Noah is asking God to bless both his two older sons, and that they would be friends and live in peace together.

Up to now, this is something I have never done: Blessed my children together, out load, asking for there to be peace and friendship among them. I've often told them they should be friends, and I have prayed for that - but never blessed them in this way. I wonder what they and I have been missing out on...

God, remind me to bless my family. Remind me to do it out loud. Remind me to be a peacemaker.

---

Sundays | Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

---

Noah - Pure Heart

 More interesting - but difficult to understand - things in the story of Noah:

Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.

When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, he said, “Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.”

So there is one son, Ham, that really did something wrong. It was so bad that Noah cursed Ham's son, Canaan, and all his descendants for all time. I did a bit of research on it, and almost all of the options for interpretation are fairly disgusting. This link goes to a short summary, if you're inclined.

I'm interested in what the other two brothers did. I think they could have gone straight in with their eyes closed, but instead they walked in backwards. I think they did this to show without a doubt that they respected their father. It wasn't only about what they needed to do, it was also about how they looked.

It's very easy to be self-righteous and say to myself, "I don't really care how things look, I'm doing what God wants." To really be pure in heart, I have to consider how I might be perceived.

Paul wrote about this regarding food: All food is clean, but it is wrong for a person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall.

God, help me to see as others see. Help me to have motives that are truly pure.

---

Saturdays | Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

---

Noah - Mercy

After the flood, God makes a promise to Noah and all his descendants (including us)...

And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

He said he is never going to kill off all of mankind again by flood, and he put the rainbow in the sky as a symbol of his commitment.

Even after letting this story sit for a week, its still hard to take in. God's method for creating the human race we see today is pretty wild. I'm not questioning the validity of it, I'm questioning my ability to understand God's way of doing things.

I do know God could have wiped us all out, but he didn't. He had mercy on us - and he wants us to remember it when we see a rainbow.

God, help me to understand you.

---

Fridays | Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

---

Noah - Hunger for Righteousness

Before the flood, God told Noah that he was the only righteous man on earth.

The Lord then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation

I have been trying to think of the mixed feelings he probably had as he built the ark, watched everything get washed away, and came back out on to solid ground. I going to assume that through all of this, he wanted to see good.

I think all along he was hungry for God and a better world - and as the beatitude goes, he was filled.

Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.

So before the flood, people only ate plants. After, God allowed people to eat animals as well - as he said, he gave them everything. They were full.

As I said in the last post, this whole story is hard for me to understand clearly. I already have a list of over a dozen "whys?" from this. A few are:

Why did God make people, just to kill off most of them in the flood?

Why did he kill the animals too?

Why did he have the whole ark and flood thing - why not just a simple plague?

Why where people vegetarians before, but could eat meat after?

I don't have good answers for any of these. But my faith doesn't hinge on having all the answers. It hinges on what God has shown me through his word and in my life. With lots of unanswered questions, I am still full.

---

Thursdays | Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

---

Noah - Meekness

Noah endured unceasing rain for 40 days, and was on the boat for 150 days. During that time, he was powerless to do anything but wait and trust God would take care of him.

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. Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 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.

Noah was meek and powerless - and he literally ended up inheriting the earth.

I think Noah was in a time of testing. It seems to be that period where God says "I will be unseen and you will wait for me, and obey me. I will see how you come through." In some stories, people fail, in other stories they succeed - and I think Noah succeeded here.

Now I think about it, Noah is almost the exact opposite of Jonah, at least up to this point. Same overall pattern in the stories, very different hearts in these two men.

I have a lot of trouble with waiting to see what God is going to do. I hate waiting for "the water to recede." Being powerless to have any effect is very difficult for me to accept. I really think I'm at that stage in my life right now.

God, I hope I do well with this test. I know whether I do or I don't, you will be there to teach me more about who I am, and what I'm made of.

---

Wednesdays | Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

---

Noah - Mourning

This one is fairly obvious - everyone was killed except Noah and his family.

The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits. Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. 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.

Genocide.

God exterminated the vast majority of the human race at the time.

I can't even imagine how Noah and his family felt. Everything and everyone gone. Parents, siblings, friends, everybody died that day.

I wonder how God felt? It's even harder to fathom.

Why did God create a race that for the most part he was going to kill off? Only the DNA of a few people made it through to make us who we are today.

I don't know the answers to any of this. I do know that this story fits the pattern of the beatitudes really well. I did a post a while ago that has some of my thinking on it.

God, help me to understand you, and learn from what I read in your word. I don't really get this story, but I trust you are a good God.

---

Tuesdays | Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

---

Noah - Poor in Spirit

The story of Noah is a hard one to understand. Once I get past the mental picture of the ark and animals, I realize its a story of great evil, death and a restart of mankind.

All of mankind was poor in spirit:

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created - and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground - for I regret that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

The story is clear about how bad people were at that time, and that Noah was the only good one.

I'm fascinated that God regretted his decision to make mankind. Some versions say God repented.

I thought God didn't make mistakes, or change his mind, or regret anything. If he knew all that would happen, how did he come to this point, deciding to kill almost everyone?

I think God is not definable. He is, for the most part, unknowable while I'm here on earth. I only see little glimpses that give me clues to how he thinks. To try to bring him down to my level, where he made a bad decision that he tried to fix, is foolish.

I like this quote from Einstein: "I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details."

So I accept that this was the way God decided to work it out. He didn't wipe out everyone, he kept the best seed for planting - Noah. Mankind would survive and  grow.

God, forgive me for all the evil I have done. Thank you for creating me and allowing me to live. I want to know your thoughts, even just a few of them.

---

Mondays | Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.

---