Not Forgotten (Genesis 8-9)

Genesis 8-9

I think that sometimes when we read the Scriptures we assume a lot of things.  One of the things that we assume is that people in the past recorded in the Bible definitively heard from God all the time.  Because the Bible is the Word of God, it necessarily carries His interaction with man.  However, what is often overlooked is how few times God's direct intervention intersects with a specific human being.  (The exception is Jesus whom the entire story of God is about.)

I have been guilty of this mistake.  I will read about Adam & Eve and their conversations with God and take for granted that they happened all the time...that God's presence was always known to them.  But if that were the case, then how would the serpent have ever deceived them?  Why would they hide when they heard God coming?  Why would Cain try to trick God into thinking he didn't know what happened to the brother that he had killed?  Why did the whole world descend into evil, if the presence of God was there different than it is now?

Think of the first words of today's passage:  "But God remembered Noah...".  What an absolutely strange way to put things!  Of course, God remembered Noah.  God doesn't forget things.  People forget things.  And yet, it is precisely because people forget things, that I believe God phrased this sentence exactly this way.

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Noah had just spent 100 years building an ark to save himself and his children and their wives from God's judgment on the earth.  The animals came to Noah and God shut the door behind them before the flood came and swept everything Noah and his family had ever known away.  The flood covered the earth for 150 days.  That's five months!  Five months of feeding animals.  Five months of grieving the death of all humanity.  Five months of wondering what lay ahead for his family...for humanity.

How many times did Noah cry out to God and ask if He was listening during that time with no apparent answer?  How many times did despair knock on the door of Noah and his family as the flood engulfed the only world they had ever known?

I think the Scripture says that God remembered Noah because Noah was tempted to think that God had forgotten him.

I think that we struggle with that same temptation.  When hard things happen in our lives and the voice of God seems muted, the questions pour forth:  God, where are You?  Are You even there?  Do You even exist?  Can't You see what I'm going through?  I need Your help, why do You not answer?  Despair knocks at our door and, like Noah, we struggle with the idea that God has actually forgotten us.

But dear one...created in the very image of God...God never forgets.  Your struggles, your need, your tears, your prayers...have never been forgotten by God.  Hold on, as Noah did, to your faith, however long it may take, and someday you will be able to look back and say...but God remembered...too.