11-12 It was the six-hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month that it happened: all the underground springs erupted and all the windows of Heaven were thrown open. Rain poured for forty days and forty nights. (The Message)
Some of us know the date and even time when it all hit. The moment that it seemed like life got turned upside down, never to be the same again. Maybe it came out of no where or possibly you saw the storm clouds building and you were bracing yourself for the moment even if you didn't have any idea what it was going to be.
In reading the story of Noah there is this moment when life suddenly changes. Some people might think that the moment was when God told Noah to build the Ark or when he was told to gather the animals or even when he was told to get into the Ark. But I think the moment when everything changed was the moment the waters started to erupt upon the earth around Noah. At that moment there was no looking back or second guessing Noah's own response. Up to that point there was always the chance that Noah just misunderstood what God was saying and the building and gathering was a practice of faithfulness demonstrating that Noah would do what God wanted but that it was not something that God was really going to use. When the rain started though it didn't just rain, it poured! At that moment there was no going back only forward. Noah couldn't change anything that he had or hadn't done up to that point. From that time on Noah was totally dependent upon God in the midst of the storm. He had no other choice but to ride it out and hope for the best. In the midst of it all it must have felt like the longest 40 days possible.
The Bible says Noah lived 950 years (or 346,750 days). You can take that number literally to mean that Noah lived almost a century or you can understand it as representing a very long time. Either way the 40 days of rain are put into the perspective of a lot of life that Noah lived. Did those 40 days change Noah? I'm sure those days made a difference in the way Noah looked at everything in his life, they couldn't help but do so. At the same time Noah was able to come through those days and still live beyond them after they were done.
What about your moment? Are you living in the midst of the rain? Are you second guessing yourself about how prepared you were for the rain? Are you stuck in the rain that has long sense stopped but you haven't looked to see if the sky has cleared and the ground dried up?
Some thoughts to ponder and share with others:
- When you see storm clouds building do you run for the window to watch or the basement to hide?
- What is the worst storm you have ever been caught in?
- Have you ever had a time that felt like 40 days of eternal rain in your life? How did you get through it?
- How have periods of rain in your life defined who you are today?
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