Living Like Noah in 2010

Have you ever had one of those days, or even a series of day, or possibly a whole year when decisions you’ve made don’t pan out as you expected? And then events begin to constrict themselves against a deadline?

I’m thinking of Noah, the renegade prophet who decided (without much wisdom) to hop on a merchant ship that was sailing off in the opposite direction from his God-given call. Storms arose. Seamen got angry. Noah got scared. The ship was being swamped. In desperate hope the sailor tossed Noah overboard knowing that he was trying to run from God. Of course, God doesn’t give up. A leviathan of the ocean swallowed Noah, only to spit him out on the shores of where he was supposed to have gone in the first place.

I wonder if in those times when the world begins to implode in on us if it is in partially the result of us missing God’s movements, if not blatantly deciding (unwisely) to turn from God and go it alone. The Good New keeps coming through, however. Even if we act like Noah, and everything falls apart as a result, the divine consciousness of the heavenly God seems to find ways us nudging us back to where we should have been in the first place. It’s part of the adventure of our spiritual nature; the ying and yang, the sin and grace, the good and evil that is part of us.

Maybe the next time the ying is more than the yang, or the sin is greater than the grace and evil seems to rule more than the good, we can remember the invitation of Jesus to start afresh. That’s sort of what salvation is about: no matter how condemned we might feel in the midst of our trouble, nothing is held against us. The great mercy of God looks at us not from what we have done (sin), but from what we can yet accomplish (grace).