Genesis 7: ACT II

Summary: Noah and is family enter the ark with every beast (or perhaps not, see here). It rains forty days and nights. The water remains on the earth for 150 days (which incidentally will be how long I spend on the Psalms when I get there, there being 150 chapters and all).

Personal Reflection: Not much I feel like talking about here, but maybe try and imagine what it would be like to be the last people on earth. You could think of it now as if there was some kind of nuclear holocaust, and there you are, just you and your immediate family. Hard to imagine, isn't it?

I guess there is probably one other point here. Man has been given a chance to start over in these chapters. It only really, really happens this once. I am often struck by the fact that people seem so bitter toward God when the scriptures record him as destroying everyone off the face of the earth, or striking someone down. Why, they ask, would God strike this person down and not that person. God seems so vindictive in the Old Testament. My response would be that at all times God has the lives of his people in his hand. Now, on a daily basis we don't talk about the Lord striking people down, but the truth of the matter is that he does. It's not because he's vindictive, and 99% of the time it isn't punishment for sin; it's just the way the world works. Adam was cast out of the garden of Eden and sent to a world where man would return to the dust from which he was created. In the end, it is God that has given us life, and it is God that will decide when it is time to leave this life. The same was true in the time of the flood. God allowed those people to die, and we can no more look at their deaths and blame them on God than we can look at any single death today and blame God.