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Friday
July 3, 2009
Called to be Free to Trust in God's Promises
Introduction
Genesis 8:1-22: God remembers Noah and causes the waters to recede. Noah
sends birds to determine whether or not dry land can be found. Finally,
dry land is revealed, and Noah, his family, and all the creatures leave
the boat. Noah makes sacrifices to God, and God promises never to destroy
everything again.
Today's Scripture: Genesis 8:22"As long as the world exists, there will be a time for planting and a time
for harvest. There will always be cold and heat, summer and winter, day
and night."
How is this Scripture passage speaking to me today? Today's Reading
The End of the Flood1God
had not forgotten Noah and all the animals with him in the boat; he caused
a wind to blow, and the water started going down.2The outlets of the
water beneath the earth and the floodgates of the sky were closed. The
rain stopped,3and the water gradually went down for 150 days.4On the seventeenth
day of the seventh month the boat came to rest on a mountain in the Ararat
range.5The
water kept going down, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of
the mountains appeared.6After forty days Noah
opened a window7and sent out a raven. It did not come back, but kept flying
around until the water was completely gone.8Meanwhile, Noah sent
out a dove to see if the water had gone down,9but since the water
still covered all the land, the dove did not find a place to light. It
flew back to the boat, and Noah reached out and took it in.10He waited another
seven days and sent out the dove again.11It returned to him
in the evening with a fresh olive leaf in its beak. So Noah knew that the
water had gone down.12Then he waited another seven days and sent out
the dove once more; this time it did not come back.13When Noah was 601 years old, on the first day of the first
month, the water was gone. Noah removed the covering of the boat, looked
around, and saw that the ground was getting dry.14By the
twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely
dry.15God said to Noah,16Go out of the boat
with your wife, your sons, and their wives.17Take all the birds
and animals out with you, so that they may reproduce and spread over all
the earth.18So Noah went out of the boat with his wife, his sons, and their
wives.19All the animals and birds went out of the boat in groups of
their own kind.Noah Offers a
Sacrifice20Noah built an
altar to the Lord; he took
one of each kind of ritually clean animal and bird, and burned them whole
as a sacrifice on the altar.21The odor of the sacrifice pleased the
Lord, and he
said to himself, Never again will
I put the earth under a curse because of what people do; I know that from
the time they are young their thoughts are evil. Never again will I
destroy all living beings, as I have done this time.22As long as the
world exists, there will be a time for planting and a time for harvest.
There will always be cold and heat, summer and winter, day and
night.
Reflect
Many ancient Near Eastern stories describe a terrible flood that destroyed
much of humankind. One such story is the Gilgamesh Epic from Babylonia.
The difference between the account of the flood in Genesis and that of
other stories is that the Genesis story speaks not of many gods in
conflict with one another, but of one God who is saddened by human
behavior. How might knowing about other flood stories impact your
understanding of the Bible's flood story?
Pray
God of Grace, just as you made the floodwaters recede and promised never to
flood the earth again, so you promise to stay in loving relationship with
me. Help me live into your grace, that I may be all the more worthy of
your love. Amen.
Prayer Concern
Endangered species
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