Observation: Only a few generations after Adam and Eve's mistake in the garden and Cain's murder of his brother Abel, the whole earth is full of violence, and God is sorry God ever made humankind. His call to Noah is to make a boat to save a select few specimens of animals of each kind, because God has resolved to flood the earth and make an end to all flesh.
Application: Hey, I don't want to tell you how to decorate your kids' nursery, but to me, this ranks high among the most troubling stories in all of scripture. I wish I had some grace-filled spin on it, to make the grieving, angry God depicted here sound more like the God we know in and through Jesus. I just don't have much.
I do know that this flood narrative is not only found in ancient Hebrew lore. The Epic of Gilgamesh in ancient Babylonian literature, and several other ancient tales recount a massive flood around this time. From an ancient perspective, where all events beyond human control were attributed to the divine, it is possible people were just trying to make sense of a great catastrophe, and answering as best they could, "why on earth did this happen?"
In the context of Christian faith, one possible way to approach this is to say that God learned something here: that just cutting off the relationship doesn't fix the problem. It's clear within days of Noah and his family setting foot on dry land that wickedness has not been destroyed. Who's to say that even if God had completely gone back to the drawing board with a whole new creation, that the same fall may have awaited the new creatures?
It could well be that this was the beginning of the "new beginning": the time when God decided that the only way to truly redeem this creation was from within: taking on flesh, dwelling among us, teaching, healing, suffering and dying right here with us, in order to transform us with new life.
When the going gets tough, it is often a temptation to go back to the drawing board and "start from scratch." every relationship is perfect at the beginning, when it's all potential and nothing has really happened. The true measure of our spiritual maturity is not doing things perfectly the first time. It's repenting, confessing, forgiving, sticking with it and asking God to redeem what we have spoiled. Everybody--even God--has had the temptation to walk off and say "[forget] it, I'm out!" (or something more or less similar to that.) I'm thankful that God's ultimate solution was to take our sin and shame into God's self, make it part of our story, and use it to make all things new.
Prayer: God, thank you for my life. Thank your for the chance after chance you give me to get things right, even though I never will. Thank your for forgiveness and grace through your Son Jesus, in whose name I pray. Amen.
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