(Genesis 7.11-24)
The sky was turning gray, and Noah thought to himself, “It looks like rain.”
And so, with one, big last push, he got that reluctant elephant up into the ark.
Whew! 1oo years is a long time to work on one job!
Noah sat down by the door of the ark and wiped the sweat from his forehead. At last he was finished with all that God had asked him to do. Noah was 600 years old when he did all that God asked him to.
Seven days went by, one for each day it took to make the word God was about wash clean.
And then the flood came.
“Now it’s time for you and your family to get into the ark!” The Lord said to Noah.
So Noah and his wife, and his three sons; Shem, Ham, and Japheth and their wives; all got into the ark. Then the Lord himself reached down from heaven and shut the door.
Water poured from the sky and rushed up from the ground.
It rained.
And rained.
And rained.
The Great Flood had come.
Lightning flashed. Thunder crashed. The winds blew huge waves across the water.
The water lifted the giant wooden boat from the ground. It lifted it above Noah’s house. It lifted it above the trees in his backyard.
The ark tossed in the storm above Noah's neighbor’s house, above the whole town, and everyone who lived there.
It rained for forty days and forty nights.
It rained so hard that Noah’s ark floated above even the highest mountains. There was no dry ground left at all.
And everything that breathed on the earth died.
What terrible things happen when people sin.
freely translated by
Paul Dallgas-Frey
12/24/02