God remembered Noah
Genesis 8.1
One hundred and fifty to two hundred days depending on how you calculate it is a long time to be in lockdown especially when it is with 7 close family members and what was effectively a floating Zoo with birds, livestock, wild animals and all the creatures that swarm over the earth.
Perhaps because of our lockdowns over recent months we might have a better understanding of what Noah and his family experienced. There was no question of breaking the lockdown for there was nowhere to go.
Although it is only guesswork the conditions they were in were certainly not cruise liner standard and their daily work in looking after the livestock must have been hugely demanding.
On top of that did they find themselves thinking of friends and neighbours who they would never see again? Did they wonder with anxiety what they would find when they finally emerged? Did they wonder if they would emerge? In essence the sort of questions that, albeit in a different form, will have occupied the minds of many in recent months. After all, Noah like us was only human.
Did he, I wonder, ever harbour doubts about the outcome? I am inclined to think that he did not! After all he had found favour in the eyes of the LORD. The LORD had instructed him in boatbuilding and prepared him for what was to come and then had shut him in as we noted yesterday.
And the trust I suggest he had in this great God was vindicated as we read
God remembered Noah
This is not the only time in Scripture when similar truths are expressed. I quote just two
Isaiah 49.15
“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
John 10.28
I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no-one can snatch them out of my hand.
Have you felt helpless and hopeless at times in the last 12 months of Covid? God knows! God remembers!
God remembered Noah begins the chapter and it ends with Noah remembering God.
Noah built an altar to the LORD and taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds he sacrificed burnt offering on it. The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart “Never again will I curse the ground because of man even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.
In response to Noah remembering the LORD this great promise came ensuring that the line from the seed of the woman would never be wiped out and that one would come who would banish death and sin by his sacrifice on the Cross.
Let us rejoice today that in whatever situations we find ourselves that this God is our God.
He remembers us let us be sure that we remember him!