Pastor Vicki Zust is the rector of St. Paul’s, Clarence, NY. Having completed a 2 year cycle of reading the entire Bible she decided to try something different. As she writes, "So I went through the Old Testament and wrote down the stories that a lot of our theology and history depends on. It turns out there are 40 of them." I am excerpting them here. #4 Noah. Read it here in Genesis chapters 6-8.
"The story of Noah is one of the first stories where we see God changing his mind.
"This is one of the reasons that it is one of my favorite stories. The other is that it has all kinds of animals – which I really like.
"But the story is actually about God looking at human beings and giving up. He can’t believe that humans have made such a mess so he decides that he wants a clean slate. However, he has this guy Noah and his family who are following God’s will and who God can’t over look.
"So God figures out a way to save Noah and a representative sample of his creatures.
"This is the first time that we see the number 40 appear – 40 days & nights in the ark – pay attention and we will see this number again.
"My favorite part of the story is the part where they come out of the ark and God puts a rainbow in the sky as the sign of a promise that he will never again destroy the world by flood. Notice that he doesn’t promise to destroy the world again, just not to do it that way.
"The question for us, other than why we think this is an appropriate story for children, is how are we being stewards of the world that God has made? How are we using or misusing God’s creation?"