year 600 , month 2, day 17
year 601, month 2, day 27
time lapse year 1, month 0, day 10
A year and ten days. Noah and his close family – 8 persons in all – were locked in for a year and ten days. They couldn’t go to the grocery store, or walk in their back yard, or call a friend to talk. There were no on-line church services or computer games.
A year and ten days with his family in a football field sized shoe box full of smelly animals.
This is tedious for me to write but worth while. My right wrist was broken late on Sunday last week, and I am typing with my left hand, Biblical method, “seek and ye shall find”.
I really miss having both hands. Actually all my normal activities, most of which I would have wonderfully enjoyed during this necessary time in seclusion, can not be performed with one hand. Stitching leather, finishing the trim in my living and dinning rooms, playing group computer games, even taking a shower, need two hands. Try washing your left elbow without using your right hand. Take some creativity, or a helpful wife struggling not to laugh.
There was a time, long ago when humankind was just beginning, that another man and his family were locked in and isolated from all their friends and relatives.
Up to that point in history, the timeline looks like this. Godly young men were marrying worldly young women, and their children were learning to be worldly, not godly, so the knowledge of God and with it the line of faith would be extinguished in just one more generation.
Gen 6: 2 the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. 5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
Everyone became worldly and corrupt. There was only one family left to carry the line of faith, that of Noah, son of Lamech and grandson of Methuselah.
Gen 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. 12 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. 13 In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark; 24 And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.
We have Internet but they did not. We know after this present inconvenient time has passed that most of our friends and relatives, indeed our lives, will pick up where they left off. But when Noah entered the huge wood box he built in obedience to God’s instructions he knew he would never again enjoy the company of all his friends and neighbors – he was to start over with nothing but his family and God. And the memories. Dear God, the memories. Friends from 600 years of living, who just couldn’t believe Noah when he told them water was going to fall from the sky – it always squirted up out of the ground. In 1,650 years no one had ever encountered water falling from the sky. And when God closed the door all Noah could do is try not to hear their pleading to please let them into the ark: “My wife, Abigail, Noah, she’s dead -she drowned. Please neighbor, please we believe you please let us in.” And the sounds of them pounding on the door, the screams, the sobs inside and outside the ark, the desperate scraping of their fingernails on the door, and then nothing but the rain. All Noah could do was sit in a corner with his face to the wall and plead with God to save them.
This is not a trial we have now, this is a minor inconvenience.
Gen 8:4 And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.5 And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen. 6 And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made: 10 And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark; 12 And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the dove; which returned not again unto him any more.
13 And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: 14 And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried. 15 And God spake unto Noah, saying, 16 Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons’ wives with thee.
year 600 , month 2, day 17
year 601, month 2, day 27
time lapse year 1, month 0, day 10
A year and ten days. Noah and his close family – 8 persons in all – were locked in for a year and ten days. They couldn’t go to the grocery store, or walk in their back yard, or call a friend to talk. There were no on-line church services or computer games.
A year and ten days with his family in a football field sized shoe box full of smelly animals. Everything he had built over 600 years was gone. All his friends and extended family were gone.
Gen 9: 20 And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: 21 And he drank of the wine, and was drunken;
Who could blame Noah?
Folks, all we need to do is stay away from people for a month or so, and things will be right back to normal. Let’s use this time profitably – there is work locally right now for those who want it. There are plenty of options to keep us busy, from praying for the sick and our first responders, to cooking on the grill at home, to watching funny cat videos. This really is not so bad. It’s a vacation.
Staying inside until the end of April doesn’t look so bad now. We can do this.