“And the Lord Shut Him In”

“And the Lord Shut Him In”

 

Hey Mom!

Ever feel like you are tired

of cleaning up messes?

Messes are a part of life.

Image if you were Mrs. Noah.

 

I like to visit the zoo every several years.

 The animals are always fascinating.

When I leave the zoo,

there are always memories

I take with me.

There is one memory that I will never forget.

It is the memory of the smells.

You know what I mean…PEE U!

Think of it… 

Noah and his family

shut up inside the ark

for one hundred and fifty days

with nature’s perfume.

No plumbing or garbage disposal.

Can you image the stink?

But the stink was

better than the storm.

As a kid, I did not like rainy days!

And as an adult, I don’t like winter!

But being shut up in the house,

is better than getting wet or frost bite.

Sometimes God puts us in places

that are very confining.

Sometimes the things God has us take care of

in those places can get smelly.

I like the words of verse 1, chapter 8…

“But God remembered

Noah and all the animals”

I wonder if Noah didn’t at times

feel like God had forget about him.

Storms come,

“the rain falls on the just and the unjust.”

The only difference is who has the umbrella?

For those outside the ark they died in the storm.

God has an ark, a place of safety,

for us and it is called the Church.

It may stink at times,

but it is better than the storm.

When Jesus comes back,

when God remembers us,

He will be coming back for His church.

Leaving the ark was not an option

and neither is leaving the church.

Scripture Reading 

 Genesis 7:1-8:2 NIV

7:1 The LORD then said to Noah, "Go into the ark, you and your whole family,

because I have found you righteous in this generation.

2 Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal,

a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate,

3 and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female,

to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.

4 Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights,

and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made."

5 And Noah did all that the LORD commanded him.

6 Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth.

7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives entered the ark

to escape the waters of the flood. 8 Pairs of clean and unclean animals,

of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground,

9 male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah.

10 And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth.

11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month — on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth,

and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.

12 And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.

13 On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth,

together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark.

14 They had with them every wild animal according to its kind,

all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings.

15 Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah

and entered the ark. 16 The animals going in were male and female of every living thing,

as God had commanded Noah. Then the LORD shut him in.

17 For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth,

and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth.

18 The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth,

and the ark floated on the surface of the water.

19 They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. 20 The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet.     21 Every living thing that moved on the earth perished — birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind.

22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died.

23 Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.

24 The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

Genesis 8:1… But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded.