leave the boat
So some friends and I are reading through the Bible in a year this year and the other day, something stuck out to me. So much so, it’s been lingering in my head for days now.
We all know the story of Noah and the Ark, right? Noah was a righteous man, and God entrusted him with a vision, to build an ark, to preserve mankind and all the species on earth. But the catch was, God spoke this to Noah in the middle of a drought, no one had seen rain. And God tells Noah, hey bud—I’m about to do something that has never been done before. I’m going to flood the whole earth and everything will be destroyed. But I want you and your family to survive, and I want to use you to be the one to protect this lineage.
So what happens then? Noah starts building his ark. Head down, fully focused on what he felt he was supposed to do, and people were astonished. They mocked him, criticized him even for saying that 1. He heard the voice of God, and 2. That God said he would kill everyone? What a load of baloney! But Noah put his reputation, his ego, even his common sense aside and said ‘nope, I know that’s God’s voice. I’m not wrong’ and he kept going.
We know what happens from there, lo and behold, God really did speak to Noah, and he really did flood the earth. It rained for over a month straight until everything was covered and all life except what was inside that ark was gone. And we love to tell our kids this story.. ha! But seriously, what grabbed my attention when I was listening to this part of the story had never stuck out to me before. Maybe because we have all the songs from Sunday school about it raining 40 days and nights. I remembered that Noah used a dove to go and search for dry land. But I had never factored in just how long Noah was on this boat. He had the boat before the rain and everyone laughed. He had the boat during the rain, and the mocking voices were silenced. But he also had the boat after the rain, because the earth was still flooded. Noah, his family, and all these animals were on the ark long enough, for it to seem like normal life at this point. It was not only a token of Noah’s obedience and sacrifice, but it was also a place of safety and refuge. It was home. And you know what happened?
”Two more months went by, and at last the earth was dry! “Leave the boat, all of you—you and your wife, and your sons and their wives. Release all the animals—the birds, the livestock, and the small animals that scurry along the ground—so they can be fruitful and multiply throughout the earth.”“
Genesis 8:14, 16-17 NLT
God told Noah “leave the boat”. And that ark is never mentioned again. For some reason this hit my heart strings, because I know I’ve heard the voice of the Lord before. Even when people thought I was crazy. And I’ve invested all that I had into what the Lord said, and it became almost my identity. But the day came when it was time to leave the boat. And once you’ve been through all of that, leaving the boat may seem harder to do than building the boat in the first place. The excitement of something new is hardly something to compete with when you look back and see how far you’ve come.
But Noah left the boat and he made a sacrifice. And the story moves on. And hardly anyone ever talks about it, but sometimes we just need to hear the Lord when he says, “okay, it’s time to move on now” even if the thing you’re moving on from is precious to you. There is so much beauty in letting go.
So as we go on into this year, I just want to challenge you—has God asked you to leave any boats?
”For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build up. A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance. A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to turn away. A time to search and a time to quit searching. A time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear and a time to mend. A time to be quiet and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace.“
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 NLT
