As in the days if Noah

For as the days of Noah were,

So will be the coming of the Son of Man. Matthew 24:37

 

Read Genesis 6:11—19

The exhaustiveness of God’s judgement on rebel humanity in the story of Noah has always, if furtively, struck me as a little ruthless. Not a soul but Noah’s family is to survive (apart from the animals). Yet, gloomy as is the thought that comes to me now, there is not a soul among my contemporaries who will not be overtaken by death. That tree I planted will one day expire. Every culture and civilisation I think so permanent will flicker out like a match. And half the great poems of our literature can do nothing but lament it. I have in this story a window. I am lost to inevitable death unless God himself should open a way through. I would rather have God’s judgement and a way through death than nothing but the death of everything.

 

Giver of all life, I forget, I easily forget as I go through each day, that I am surrounded by death and am moving toward it. I put it from my mind, mostly. I have no desire to live in the gloom of it. Without you, indeed, I barely could face it except with resignation. I would look for the community of others when the griefs come, and seek a stoic contentment. I would grasp at what I could from this passing civilisation, its songs and stories and games, books of them, movies of them, and I would try to forget that this civilisation, too, will one day decay. But in Christ you deny me this indulgence. In his resurrection you open the way to a life where joy will be enduring and real. He is the ark, and in his resurrection lies my life ahead.