Genesis 8-9 - Noah feels overwhelmed
So, imagine this.  The ark lands on the mountains of Ararat. Noah’s jarred. He doesn’t know what to think, but apparently, the ark has landed.  He looks outside… yeah, ”We’re still at Ararat,” he says to himself. Then he waits.  He sends out a raven, but the ground’s not dry enough for it to land. “Well of course not,” Noah thinks. “They’re a desert bird.” So, he sends out a dove, but the water hasn’t receded enough for even the dove. He sends it out again, and it brings back an olive branch. Sends it out again, and it doesn’t return.  ”I guess the water’s receded enough, even beyond the mountains,” Noah thinks.
Noah’s birthday is approaching, and he’s thinking about it.  ”Happy Birthday to me” he thinks to himself sarcastically.  He doesn’t really know what to do. Does he get out of the ark? Does he wait longer? “Sure, the dove found a home, but all these animals?” A few days pass, and it’s his birthday now. If he’s going to get out, then he might as well do it today. He peaks outside, and the ground around the ark is dry. “Well, doesn’t that beat all!” But, he freezes. Then, God tells him to get out of the ark. ”Okay, okay. You don’t have to push.” Of course, God does push the ones He loves, and Noah was a righteous man… he obeyed.
For almost two months, Noah oversaw the transfer of the animals from the ark to the lands just outside the mountains. From Noah’s calculations, that should be approximately where everyone lived before God killed them all. Finally, Noah brings up the rear and emerges from the mountains. He beholds a horrible site… there’s nothing there.
No people.
No tents.
No burnt out fires.
No villages at all.
The land was dry, and things were growing, but it was empty. So empty.
The animals had left the mountains, but having been together for a year on the ark they kind of stayed together. Noah could them them all huddling together, eating what grass was growing back, climbing whatever bushes there were. It just accented the impact of the death Noah saw in all this emptiness. It was as if no one he knew had ever existed, except his wife and sons, and his sons’ wives. Whatever else Noah felt, he was puny… and God was huge. Bigger now than Noah had ever realized, and he was perhaps a bit overwhelmed. “Would God ever do this again?” He may have thought. “And will I be spared again the next time? Do I want to be?” He looked up, remembering how it was. It had been horrible, people not even realizing God existed… until it was too late. “That was why I was chosen. So God would not be forgotten.”
 20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21 The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.Â
 22 “As long as the earth endures,
      seedtime and harvest,
      cold and heat,
      summer and winter,
      day and night
      will never cease.”
God then proceeded to establish His covenant with Noah and promised never to destroy the world again by flood. He blessed Noah, giving over control of the animals to him for caring and for food. He then showed the sign of the rainbow, to reassure Noah that this would never happen again.
Noah was spent. He told his wife he was going to take their vineyard they had from the ark, and go plant it. He went over to his tent for it. He picked up the vine in its planter, and the wine he had made from its grapes. As he sat there in the dirt, he began to drink.
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