Noah Built an Arky, Arky

We’ve had a lot of rain and flooding and I’ve been reading a lot of statuses about building an ark and I ‘m thinking that I could probably build one with all the building materials in my basement from unfinished home projects.  I don’t know if I have any gopher barky though.  I might have to make a trip to Lowe’s to pick some of that up.  I know for sure that there’s a bunch of pitch at church because we have THREE flat-roofed buildings and my husband is always patching them and ruining his clothes.

So—I decided to read the story of Noah.  The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.  But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.  So God gave Noah instructions to build an ark and verse 22 of Genesis 6 says, “Noah did everything just as God commanded him”.  No questions, no tweaking, no complaining. 

That was a HUGE task—not only building the ark, but packing the food to meet the dietary needs of all the various animals not to mention all the cleaning supplies it would require—I’m talking gallons of Lysol and Febreeze.  I have trouble just packing for a weekend camping trip with my family and one dog. But Noah did all the Lord commanded him to do—it says it two times, Genesis 6:22 and 7:5.  I’m pretty sure Noah had to put in a lot of twelve hour days to get all that done.

What an amazing story and what a great display of faith by Noah, but just a couple of chapters away we find Noah drunk laying “uncovered” inside his tent.  When he comes out of it, he starts barking curses on his grandson, Canaan, because Canaan’s dad, Ham, wasn’t discreet enough in the way he handled finding his dad in his questionable state and blessing Shem and Japheth for handling the situation appropriately.  

I think it odd that Noah didn’t take responsibility for his behavior in overindulging in his homemade wine and failing to keep his robe on, but got nasty mad at his son for not handling the situation right.  Sometimes I scratch my head at these heroes in the hall of faith in Hebrews 10, but then I am acutely aware that I do the same things in different ways.  I fly high in my faith one day and crash drastically the next—sometimes I do it in the same day just like them.

I’m pretty sure there’s more to this story of Noah than I can understand with my limited education in Old Testament Theology, but I think even if I have all the info here, Noah still doesn’t come out as a knight in shining armor.  I’m also sure that if this were my family story and I were writing Genesis, I would probably opt to leave this skeleton in the closet, but I’m so glad the authors of the Bible chose to share both the great moments of faith along with embarrassing moments of weakness in many key characters of faith.

Yesterday, one of my friends posted on her blog that she had a temper tantrum on Easter Sunday.  She shared how she faced a sink full of dirty dishes with a broken dishwasher, the oven catching fire and burning out the heating element, and her computer acting up.  In the midst of the house falling apart, she was aware of how blessed she was to have her two healthy boys sleeping soundly in their clean beds, to have a mother who prepared a great Easter meal for her entire family and that all of them could be there, she expressed how blessed she was to have a hard-working husband, but she still succumbed to despair and with candor described her tantrum.

I was laughing and feeling very humbled by her willingness to share so transparently her episode.  I was laughing because I had also had a temper tantrum the day before Easter with similar things happening to me, but I didn’t write about them on MY blog.  I shared “spiritual” stuff.  But come on—aren’t our struggles “spiritual” stuff?  Don’t we all struggle to some capacity and isn’t God’s grace amazing and doesn’t it make us so aware of how much we needed Jesus, the greatest hero who didn’t have any skeletons in His closet, to be our Savior?

I wish the Christian community could be more like the Bible where we share our testimonies of great things and also share honestly about our mistakes and the sin we struggle with.  I haven’t heard too many stories like this one about Noah during testimony time at church, and I think I would feel uncomfortable if I did, but maybe in appropriate settings with intimate sojourners in the faith, we should be transparent.

James 5:16:  Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.

My intercessions are usually not filled with prayers for people’s faults that they have asked me to pray about.  I pray for friends with cancer and financial troubles, relational problems and soul wounds, but to pray for each other’s faults as diligently as we pray for cancer, might be a good thing.  I guess first we need to confess them—you go first.