Noah and New Things

Today I was reading from Genesis, the story of Noah and the Ark.  Traditional, classic story that we all hear as kids in Sunday School, but it took on a whole new meaning for me today.  The story goes that God was disappointed with humanity, so He took his faithful follower Noah and told him to build this ark, taking two of each animal with him...etc.  Then God wiped out the rest of the world with a flood.  Just...pause and think about that for a second.  God puts one man and his family on a boat and wipes out the rest of the world.  That's one pretty awesome (and terrifying?) God.  What power.  Anyway, after a long time of the flood waters, the verse says "But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and livestock with him in the boat."  God remembered them, and made the whole world new.  How awesome!  God comes in with this terribly awesome display of power, wipes out the entire world-minus Noah, his family, and some animals.  I'm picturing how terrifying that would have been on either side of the boat.  Outside of the boat, facing death would be really scary, I don't think anyone would disagree with that.  Inside the boat, though, it would have been LONG days, trapped inside the boat.  I'm just picturing this and can't even imagine what it was like for Noah and his family.  So it's been long days inside this boat and God remembers Noah and the ark full of things He saved-and makes the whole world new.  That's really cool.  It's been kind of a rough time for the world-and God makes it brand new again.  Granted, it doesn't take long for Noah and his descendants to stray from God's ways again, but still-He makes all things new.  His mercies are new each morning.  This is something I'm really holding onto in my life, right now, as it seems the flood waters in my own life are rising quickly-God makes all things new.  After the bad times, He will make things right again.  And one day-He will be our ultimate redeemer as we get to join Him for an eternity in Heaven, where it will all be made right and all things will be made clear.  :)  Even here on this earth, though, as long as we are in God, there will always be good times to follow the bad-a thought to hold on to for me today.

One verse that especially jumped out to me in my reading was Gen 8:22:  "As long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night."  Now, this is part of God's covenant to us to never wipe out the world again.  God's saying (I think, anyway...) that He will allow this things (like rain) to exist in their own time, but never so overwhelmingly again.  When I read this earlier today, however, I was filled with such hope.  This verse, to me, is such a reminder of the differences between our world and the next.  In our world, we have all these juxtapositions (look it up, great word! ;) ), these things that in our world, as we know it and understand it, could not exist without the other.  Without planting there is no harvest.  Without cold there is no heat.  In our world, this things are comparisons.  They are "truths" with a little t-they are things that are reliant upon some other standard to base them upon.  Our world is filled with things like that.  I could be totally wrong here, but in my mind, heaven will be just the opposite.  Instead of  being a place filled with truths and juxtapositions (:D), heaven will be filled with Truth.  It will be only good.  In heaven, we'll be beyond the reaches of the evil that keeps this earth (and us too!) groaning for redemption.  It will be a place that is incomprehensible to us now, here on earth, where we are surrounded by such opposites.  I can't imagine a summer without a winter (or the other way around, seeing as how I'm more of a coat-and-snowfall type of person)- and that's part of the beauty of this world.  We get to appreciate these differences because there are differences to appreciate.  This is part of what makes Heaven so incomprehensible-but makes it so spectacular.  Here on earth we have this ever-raging war between good versus evil-but God will make all things new.  He is the ultimate redeemer.  How spectacular is that?  One day, when we meet Him-these earthly burdens will be lifted from us and we will get to see Him in all His glory.  What an awesome picture that is.  :)

Question for today:  Do we lose some of the beauty when we lose these opposites?  What would a world/place without opposites be like in your mind?