GOD LIKED WHAT HE SAW
Now, isn’t that interesting—Noah, who was Enoch’s great-grandson, walked with God, too! In those days, people lived so long that it was amazing that Enoch was gone before Noah was born. Adam himself, father of the whole race, died only 126 years before Noah’s birth, and he had still been alive when Enoch turned 300!
This was a bitter time for God. He had been so joyful when He created the world, with people to love. Now there was almost no one at all, on the whole planet, who loved God back. The Message says God’s heart was broken, and I think that’s true. Don’t you?
Now the whole world was going to be destroyed, but God still wanted to save as many as He could. Perhaps the fear of knowing the Flood was coming would turn some of them back to Him. God asked Noah to build the ark, and to preach as earnestly as he could, begging and pleading with people to get on and be saved. For 120 years!
It’s interesting to think about: God didn’t ask for a change of heart or mind. He just asked them to walk up the ramp and get on. How hard was that? It was kind of like, “Don’t eat from that one tree!”
Noah, by his actions, said to those around him, “No matter how silly it may appear to you, I am God’s child first. Your friendship and your opinion of me come after that in importance.”
I wonder how hard it was for Noah to keep on building, to keep on preaching, year after year, decade after decade, when everyone except his own family thought he was nuts.
I wonder how hard it’s going to be this week for me, or for you, to keep on loving God, to keep on being kind, to go on loving everyone around us, and acting on it . . . no matter what they say or think . . .
Loving Father, help me be determined to be Your steadfast child first. Let nothing else in life, no matter how important or how difficult or how tempting, come before that. Let my words and actions show all those around me that I belong to You.
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