The Flood

Genesis 6-9

once again, this is a part of Genesis that I am very familiar with. I must say that I cannot wait to get to books and stories in the bible that I don't know. which will be soon. still, just reading it as a whole is helping me, because it gives me this sense of being able to...sort of, kinda, see how all the stories are puzzle pieces, and they all fit into the story. its early days but I am really loving this. as dorky as it sounds, whenever I read a chapter (I am doing this super slowly as you can tell)and highlight and write my thought as comments on the side, I feel very excited and I really love when I do that. there's something about reading the bible that...I don't know....makes me...feel good. so dorky. lol. but my dorky side got me into ACU's Master of English program, so that's okay. :) and a Bachelors of Arts degree! :)
     As I said, I am familiar with this story, so there was not too many things surprising about it. I did have lots of thoughts/questions as I was reading this story. one of the first questions I had, is  chapter 6 verse 2: "the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose." my question is, does "sons of God" include Jesus? also, I thought God only had one son. I remember reading this story when I was younger and it was always angels who married the daughters of men. I also did not understand verse 3, where God says: "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal, his days will be a hundred and twenty years." I did not really understand that verse, what it meant. in verses 5-8 of chapter 6, God saw how wicked mankind had become, in deeds and in thoughts, and God says He will wipe mankind because "I am grieved that I have made them."(Gen 6:7). a few verses earlier it says that His heart was filled with pain. reading that, how God was grieved because He made mankind, made me think that even God has regrets. its interesting coz I never really think of God as feeling emotions other than anger, dissapoitment, or love. but maybe He feels regret, jealousy, funny-ness, etc. interesting thought for me.
 In verse 19 of chapter 6 God says to Noah: "you are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you." I had two thoughts concerning this verse. my first thought was that it sounded like God didn't want to destroy His creation but start over. after all, if He wanted to destroy all of creation, why save male and female pairs of all kinds of animals? and why save Noah and his family? it sounds like God just wanted to get rid of the bad, and keep the good. its kinda like when you're working on a project, and you don't like how its turning out so you decide to get rid of it and start over, but you see a few things that you do like, so you keep them. my second thought is that He had Noah save male and female pairs. couples. not families, not life groups, not friends, but pairs. couples. I found that interesting. people keep saying to me that I shouldn't want to have a romantic relationship so badly, that friends and God should be enough and...if I always hate that. God Himself saw that it was not good for Adam to be alone, and Adam was perfect, no sin, perfect intimate one-on-one relationship with God.
When God shuts in Noah and his family and the animals in the ark, it made me see that sometimes God shuts you in to save you, to help you. picture what it must have been like inside that ark: dark. smelly from all the animals. definitely no kitchen to cook in. cold most likely. no beds. no bathroom.they wouldn't have had anything for entertainment but each other and the animals. and also the world was being flooded, so that ark was most likely tossing and turning and going up and down and sideways. doesn't sound like fun. it sounds hard and scary. taken out of content, this sounds like a punishment. yet God was helping them, He was saving them. This was a gift, an honor, that God saw them as being righteous and saved them. now Noah and his family had the advantage of knowing the whole picture, why they were in that ark. us? we don't. we don't always know what God shuts us in, somewhere where we don't really want to be but would rather be elsewhere. even Noah and his family,knowing they were being saved, probably did not truly want to be inside that ark. yet, God knew what He was doing, and just like He had a reason for Noah and his family being inside that ark, He also has a reason when we find ourselves in places we don't want to be.
I noticed while reading this that it is mentioned a lot that Noah found favor with God. I guess the author wanted to really make that point, but I found that interesting. I also thought about how God must have felt, when He chose to flood the earth. sure He saw how evil and sinful mankind had become, yet this was also His creation, that He had created, and destroying it, flooding it, must have been so heartbreaking. imagine having to watch your child be put to death by lethal injection or by the electric chair...painful right? even knowing the awful crime they did, knowing its the only way to protect society....now imagine you are the one who chose that, the one who pushed the button to electrocute them or who gave them the injection. God knows how that feels. hundreds of times over, He knows how that feels.I'm sure this is not what most people think when they read this story, but even at the beginning, God is willing to make the big sacrifices required for His creation. makes me want to say I'm sorry that we are not always willing to do the same for Him.
²¹" The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though^[a] every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done"(Genesis 8:21-22). the thought I had about these verses is that it sounds like God said He wouldn't destroy the earth because of man, and usually what is taught is that He promises not to destroy humans like that again, but its not exactly that, although we are included as living creatures. its not a promise specifically about us, if that makes sense.
when its talking about how the waters started to recede, it once again struck me that God's way of doing things seems to me to be...steady, one step at a time. the waters did not just go away in a day or in one go, but instead God had them recede slowly, bit by bit.  I found that interesting. the flood itself also took several days, it didn't just flood at once.
one last thought. "Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded^[a] to plant a vineyard. ²¹ When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. ²² Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. ²³ But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.

. ^"24 When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, ²⁵ he said,

   “Cursed be Canaan!
   The lowest of slaves
   will he be to his brothers.”

 ²⁶ He also said,

   “Praise be to the LORD, the God of Shem!
   May Canaan be the slave of Shem.
²⁷ May God extend Japheth’s^[b] territory;
   may Japheth live in the tents of Shem,
   and may Canaan be the slave of Japheth.”(Gen 9:20-27). in this story, Noah gets drunk and passes out naked in his tent. one of his sons comes in, sees him, and walks out. he tells the other two, and they come in and cover him. this is gonna sound weird, but when I read it, it sounded a lot like the parable of the Good Samaritan.not exactly, but the basics are there. the first son saw Noah and did not do anything, the other two did. they didn't have to go into the tent, but they did. interesting that this is so similar to the Good Samaritan parable Jesus tells later on.
this was an interesting story and I cannot wait to keep reading Genesis.