Coach Michelle here! I saw this article and I thought it would be good to share. Enjoy!
By DAWN REED
Did you know that Noah, his family and all the animals were on the ark for over a year?
When we study about him and the big boat, we often think it just lasted 40 days and 40 nights. The end. Exit with a rainbow. In reality, it was a lot longer and a whole lot harder than that!
Today, to me, no other Bible story applies more readily to the Coronavirus. In the book of Genesis, we read that God told Noah, to build an ark…and he did. God told Noah to go into the ark with his fam…and he did. (They were in there for one whole week before it started raining!)
And then the rain came. And came. And came. It was like forever! The rocking, the mewing, the hissing-oh, you KNOW there were SNAKES! The family was stuck together. Did they play charades? Hide and seek in the animal pens? Did the daughters-in-law all get along?
Noah had only a few instructions from the Lord. He hadn’t been told the WHOLE plan. Probably a good thing!
There were no daily updates from the governor of the land or the President of his nation. There was only trusting in God! Because of that, Genesis 8:1 tells us something fabulous: “God remembered Noah…”
After a million-non-NTI days on the water (actually 150), they finally docked on top of a mountain. May the Lord be praised! But…
THEY STILL COULDN’T GET OFF. Dadgum it! (I’m hearing their conversations in my head!) It makes sense: everything would have been completely muddy and gooey. They wouldn’t have even been able to stand up! The timing was not right … yet. So they had to wait two and a half more months. On the ark. With the animals and the family. (It feels like WE are on the ark, too, these days!)
And … then at just the right time … God said it was OK to disembark. I’m picturing the humans off before the animals! Men, women, and probably beasts, praised the Lord! Did they EVER stop talking about their voyage?
At just the right time, our coronavirus quarantine will be over. We will remember these days for the rest of our lives. What stories will we tell? Has it made us better? Has it made our faith grow?
While we are in “our ark” (aka quarantine), let’s make sure we are doing good things to gear up for our release: reading our Bibles, taking time to pray, enjoying-or trying to enjoy-close time with our family. When it’s over, we, too, will move about without restrictions and we will praise the Lord for our freedom!
We may even see a RAINBOW!
