DAY 23

I continue to be amazed by the way my two scripture reading for the day complement each other. Those of you, who know me, have a pretty clear idea that I don’t function in the morning before my coffee. So I start my reading out with a Daily Bread Devotional and my first cup of “bean water.” It is a slow read, with a few prompts to help me out and keep my groggy brain focused. Then I move on the book of Romans where I read anything from a few verses (if they are a lot to digest) to an entire chapter. This morning, my Daily Bread reading was about Noah and I was so struck by what GOD showed me in the scripture passage that it wasn’t until after reading my chapter in Romans that I realized I had forgotten to read the devotion that went along with it. I love it when HE shows me new things in passages I thought I knew already.


God remembered Noah, as well as all the wildlife and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. God caused a wind to pass over the earth and the water begin to subside. The sources of the watery depths and the floodgates of the sky were closed and the rain from the sky stopped. The water steadily receded from the earth, and by the end of 150 days the water had decreased significantly. The ark came to rest in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to recede until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were visible. {Genesis 8:1-5}

Most, if not all, of us know the account of Noah and his ark. This is something we have been told about since childhood, but today I saw a little bit about healing that I had never seen before. GOD remembered Noah and the animals and was rescuing them, but HE did not cause it to happen in an instant. Yes, he could have made it happen completely and totally with nothing more than a thought, but being GOD he knows that his creation does not process life events that quickly. Instead HE caused the water to recede little by little, building an understanding in the heart of Noah that this ordeal was soon coming to the end. If HE had simply caused the earth to dry and heal over the matter of a second, Noah and his family may have been frightened…so frightened that they could not bring themselves to leave the ark. Even worse, a quick fix could have ended up being underwhelming. Here GOD had just crated a huge catastrophic event to cleanse HIS creation. To reverse the effects so quickly may have caused Noah and future generations to simply shrug off the ordeal, downplaying the magnitude of what had been accomplished.

I know that I frequently get impatient with GOD, but healing and change take time. Sometimes it takes years, not the days that Noah counted. Then again, although it was only days that it took to be released from the ark, Noah and his family were sure to have seen and felt the results of the flood for decades after it occurred. GOD will orchestrate our rescue, and has orchestrated it, but HE also knows the proper timing. HE knows what we can handle and the time frame that we will need to work thought and accept HIS rescue for what it really is.

Still digesting that, I turned to Romans.

For my inner self I joyfully agree with God’s law. But I see a different low in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body. What a wrenched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? I thank God throught Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I myself am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh, to the law of sin. {Romans 7: 22-24}

Just like GOD brings us physical rescue, HE is also brings us spiritual rescue. And once again, it is not completely instantaneous. It takes time and discipline for our flesh to become obedient to the laws of GOD, despite what the desires of our heart may be. Yes, when we submit to GOD, HE brings huge instantaneous changes to us, but we are far from completion. Even Paul continued to struggle with his flesh. Throughout our days, GOD continues to rescue us a little at a time and we reach the goal the day we are finally taken home. None of us will be perfected on this earth, but as long as we continue to follow, the flood waters will continue to recede until we see the light at the end of the tunnel.