Genesis 8: Ignore the dove!

Another early morning, and now this rising with the sun (or lack of it) is getting easy! A little tip I found for if my eyelids are closing and sending me back off to sleep: go and jump in the shower, then continue after!

Ok, here's one for Genesis 8:11-15

11When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth.
He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.By the first day of the first month of Noah's six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry.By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.Then God said to Noah,“Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives.

OK, here's what I love about this: Noah did not leave the ark when the dove didn't return; he left it almost two months later, when God told him to. To me this is a massive revelation - even though the dove experiment made it look like the earth was safe again, God knew there were still lots of submerged bits, and Noah waited for God's OK at the end of the next month before leaving. What a great message about listening to God - even if everything 'looks' right, we still need to listen for God's OK (or lack of it).


8:21 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.

OK, bit of an odd one this, but it just makes me see clearly how we (I) cannot do this Christianity thing without God's help. Every inclination of my heart is evil, and it's only with God's daily help that I can make it through. Too often we get into works of the flesh, trying to do the right thing and failing, but we need to daily lean on God's strength and tell him 'I can't do this without you, so please help me!' That's something I'm learning more and more as I try and fail, try and fail, try and fail. In my own strength I am literally the chief of sinners (roll over Paul), but if I daily give myself to God, between the two of us we can make it: what a revelation!