7/15/09

After the flood

This time of year it rains in Florida and then rains again and again and again. It does stop, and when it does the air is clean, really clean. That's what this picture says to me: clean! The Earth had become full of sin and the flood had destroyed all life and then the rain stopped.
Gen 8:1-17
8 God remembered Noah, all the animals, and all the livestock that were with him in the ark; and God made a wind to pass over the earth. The waters subsided.2 The deep's fountains and the sky's windows were also stopped, and the rain from the sky was restrained.3 The waters receded from the earth continually. After the end of one hundred fifty days the waters decreased.4 The ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on Ararat's mountains.5 The waters receded continually until the tenth month. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen.6 It happened at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made,7 and he sent forth a raven. It went back and forth, until the waters were dried up from the earth.8 He sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from the surface of the ground,9 but the dove found no place to rest her foot, and she returned to him into the ark; for the waters were on the surface of the whole earth. He put forth his hand, and took her, and brought her to him into the ark.10 He stayed yet another seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark.11 The dove came back to him at evening, and, behold, in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off. So Noah knew that the waters were abated from the earth.12 He stayed yet another seven days, and sent forth the dove; and she didn't return to him any more.13 It happened in the six hundred first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from the earth. Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked. He saw that the surface of the ground was dried.14 In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry.15 God spoke to Noah, saying,16 "Go forth from the ark, you, and your wife, and your sons, and your sons' wives with you.17 Bring forth with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, including birds, livestock, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply on the earth."WEB
God is patient, but there is a limit and then .... wham, judgment. After the judgment, God makes a way out, a clean slate for those who have been preserved. So it was in the days of Noah and this scenario will be repeated again. Not the flood, for God has promised not to do THAT AGAIN, but judgment is sure because sin is prevalent, almost overwhelming. Be preserved through the next cataclysm, read from 1st Peter chapter 3:20-21 and see what must be done.