Genesis 7: 17 - 8: 14

 

¹⁷ For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. ¹⁸ The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. ¹⁹ They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. ²⁰ The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits. ²¹ Every living thing that moved on land perished – birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. 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.

8¹ 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.

God Remembers.

Quiz question: How long was Noah in the ark? People sometimes answer ‘40 days’ – but that is only the duration of the rainfall. The flood lasted another 150 days, and Noah waited further time after that until the earth was completely dry. They entered the ark on the seventeenth day of the second month of Noah’s six hundredth year (Gen. 7: 11 - 13), and they left the ark on the twenty-seventh day of the second month of Noah’s six hundred and first year (Gen 8: 14) – one year and ten days in all. So our covid lockdown (seven months, so far) is nothing! Let’s pray that life for us begins to get back to something approaching normal in a shorter time than Noah spent in the ark!

Gen. 8: 1 – “But God remembered Noah…” Had God forgotten Noah? Did God, one day, look down from heaven and say to himself, ‘Who’s that bobbing about down there in a boat? Oh, yes, I remember: it’s Noah!’ No, that is not what is meant by this verse. When God ‘remembered’ Noah, it means he acted on his behalf. But, of course, God’s timing is not our timing. We are often impatient, but God acts at just the right time. So when God acts on our behalf, it might be not quite as soon as we would have hoped, so there is a sense of how God ‘remembers’ us. Later in Genesis, God ‘remembers’ Rachel (Gen. 30: 22) and she bears a son. Similarly, in Exodus 2, when the people of Israel were in slavery in Egypt, God ‘remembered his covenant with Abraham’. In Psalm 25: 7 there is a lovely prayer: “According to your love remember me, for you, Lord, are good.” Again, there is no suggestion that God has forgotten the psalmist. This is a prayer that God will come to his aid and act on his behalf.

At the moment, during the covid-19 pandemic, this is a good prayer that we can pray. ‘Lord, remember us, and bring an end to the spread of the virus. Lord, remember us in our anxiety, in our suffering and uncertainty.’

God comes to us and he takes up our cause – he acts on our behalf. He ‘remembers’ us. And we too must remember than when we are waiting, uncertain, praying with no obvious response, it is not that God has ‘forgotten’ us – it is simply that God’s timing is perfect. We can look back on times in our lives when we prayed and it seemed that heaven was closed. But when God answered our prayer, we know, with hindsight, that it was at just the right time. And we learned from the time of patience beforehand. But that doesn’t mean we can’t pray to God, ‘Lord, remember us!’

 

Prayer

“Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Saviour, and my hope is in you all day long. Remember, Lord, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old. Do not remember the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you, Lord, are good.” Amen. (Ps. 25: 4 - 7)