Latest Production fix (082023) now available (click ‘play’ above). Audio Script below.
It’s amazing to realize how our Heavenly Father has worked His way steadily towards us from the Fall. Nothing, of course, surprises Him. Some might argue that the delay between the beginning and the arrival of Jesus was unnecessarily long, but such an argument fails to consider the nature of man — the free nature of man. I won’t spend my time here dissecting Godly wisdom from a very human, very limited, and very selfish perspective, what I will try to do is convey the Lord’s mercy in Noah’s time as now, as not something God owed or owes us as His creation (ridiculous) but as a gift whose only barrier to receipt is our own free will; a barrier historically weaponized against us by our preference for sin.
There is more here than meets the eye.
In Him, M
Audio Script:
THE ARK | 2 | Wood & Spirit
NARRATOR: The following is drawn from the Book of Genesis, chapters 6 to 9.
There are many stories but only one that truly matters.
The best and rest of the repository of profoundly epic and personal tales & testimonies are also found in the Bible and versions of same are replayed across calendar history.
Life under God IS covered exhaustively in the pages of Holy Scripture. It’s all there. Everything you need. Everything God-breathed.
There is no new revelation. Only the costumes change.
Those of us born before the public rejection of God can still recall many a Bible adventure: We remember Pharoah, the Passover and parting of the Red Sea, Moses and the Ten Commandments, Samson and Delilah, David and Goliath, King Solomon, Jonah and the whale, and of course, Adam and Eve just to name a few.
Every Christmas we follow the star to Bethlehem, and every Good Friday we revisit Our Savior’s tortured path to the Cross, and His glorious rising from the tomb Easter Sunday.
The stories are seared into our consciousness as powerful examples of faith under fire, withering judgments, and amazing miracles, providing us a lens through which to see different aspects of our story unfold over time, the complex if stiff-necked waywardness of our conflicted desires, and God’s tireless devotion to … saving us from ourselves.
And then there is Noah. He, famously of the flood.
Ask people today what Noah’s Ark is about and most will say, if they have any clue at all, that ‘It’s about finding shelter from the storm.' Pinch them and they might also reference cute cartoon animals poking their heads above decks under a gleaming rainbow, Civil War general Noah looking on, Darla the dove, olive leaf in beak, perched on his shoulder.
It’s about starting over they will say, hence the hijacking of the rainbow’s glad tidings to represent … well, you know.
They’re painting a picture, of course, of an incomplete story — a generations-in-the-making tale of woke survival constructed from deliberate fantasy to serve … a deliberate fantasy.
The dancing dreams of a one-legged man.
Try adding, ‘What about a deluge of God’s wrath directed against a wicked world at that time encompassing every land-based thing not on the ark … and welcome the thousand-yard stare.
For the flood is first and foremost, God's heartbreaking repudiation of His own beloved creation a mere 10 generations after Adam, featuring a steady spiraling descent into evil by people in no way doomed to God's wrath but who chose it (sound familiar?). The Book of Genesis goes on to say, their thoughts were wicked, continually, a problem only abated by the almost total annihilation of life itself.
We escaped by a hair.
And I don’t think we will ever understand on this side of life the deep pain of betrayal God endured in those days, in particular, which we’ll follow up on a little later in the series, nor the extent of His unfailing love that is always tested – and later fully incarnated in the life, death, and resurrection of His only Son, Our Lord, Jesus Christ.
And yes, of course, there is a ton of meaning and prefigurement in the Noah story, not that the flood is merely symbolic.
Just to be clear:
The rainbow is a standing memorial of God’s mercy, not His approval of a sex cult,
The flood waters represent baptism, the washing away of the sins of the world, the Ark, the womb of regeneration and landfall on Mt. Ararat, the point of debarkation from old to new — from death quite literally to new life.
But anyway, this is the point. At least for me:
The connection between God’s broken heart and His hope beyond hope, if we can call it that, for our eventual redemption is key here, and present in dramatic extremes.
As for the ‘ark,’ that ship has sailed. Or has it?
How different on the surface, a tar-covered vessel 100 years in the making, and a miraculous unseen work of the soul, except where the latter seamlessly fulfills the former, forever reminding us that while God WOULD NOT revoke the curse of original sin (and He could have), He promised never again to flood the Earth [Genesis 9:11], leaving Him instead to issue a continuing fleet of Arks to save us from death by self-drowning, if you will, in each of the landmark covenants God made with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and finally in Jesus Christ.
People, if you don’t think this is a love story then you’re not paying attention.
But then, we rarely do.
God is love [1 John 4:7-12]. And His Fatherly concern for all of us up to our last breath is to save us from the curse of original sin and separation from Him forever.
In Noah’s story, all perished but one, thematically speaking,
… and in Jesus, ONE DIED FOR ALL.
There's a reason it's called 'The greatest story ever told.'
Mark for Redpin, next time.
END
/Attribution/
ARK THEME MUSIC | Olsted Harten ‘The Fence’, Blue Dot sessions
Copyright Joseph Mark Alfano, 2023, All Rights Reserved
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The Ark_2 | Wood & Spirit