Rowing on with Mrs. Noah

A little behind, but we're still rowing!!
(So, for future reference, thought we'd get a few notes in on Mrs. Noah...seeing that we were talking about her and Eve last week!)

“the continuous day-by-day relationship with God that distinguishes the child of God from everyone else.” (p57)

There is “no middle ground” here. Our roles in others’ lives can be life affirming, encouraging! We can be the supporting cast for others around us, we are pouring (good or bad) into lives all around us, sometimes when we’re not even aware of it. Mrs. Noah had her own supporting cast, her sons and her daughters-in-law. They all worked together with Noah in following God’s instructions for them, building the ark, and putting up with ridicule. There is no story line (tho’ surely there could have been) about Noah having to overcome his own family to follow God. None of us are in this life alone, no matter what our perception is.

Every culture has a template for our lives that can drive our expectations. Mrs. Noah was no different. She had raised her children and was now at her ‘grandmother’ stage…”a life of settled satisfaction”. (p55) Isn’t it funny how we can all get set in our plan, in a rut, comfy and predictable, and then POOF!, God allows our cage to get rattled and we’re surprised?

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.  Isaiah 55:8

Once in the ark, in the midst of the storm (with no windows!), they had only God to rely on (p60)….seems easy to say, but wonder what that looked like when you’re slopping up after the pigs and telling the elephants not to rock the boat!?

Or, when something’s rocking our own boat?

It is soooo easy, so human to put our “need” of understanding a situation ahead of being obedient. Society has defined obedience as, being blind, mind-numbing…cast it in a negative connotation. And from a ‘world’ perspective it is complete surrender of everything we think we are, so the world isn’t wrong from a head perspective, but the heart and soul are not involved in that definition. Our obedience to our Father, hands over any strings we may want to attach and acknowledges the HE is the one running the planet,  not us! 

~Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?  Romans 6:16