Search This Blog

Saturday, July 5, 2014

God Remembers You

This is the message given in the United Methodist Churches of the Wheatland Parish Sunday, July 6, 2014.  The Bible verses used are Genesis 7:17--8:9.

            You’ve probably heard of Seasonal Affective Disorder.  Maybe some of us even have it.  It’s called SAD for short.  It’s something that affects people’s moods, and it can be serious.  Sometimes it affects people in the summer, but usually it comes in the winter.  
In the winter, of course, we have really short days.  Not much sunlight.  Not only is the sun not up for very long, but we tend to have a lot of grey, cloudy days where we cannot see the sun even when it is up.  That affects most people to a certain extent.  Very few of us like it.  But for some, it can cause a real and serious depression.
I bring that up because, as we think about the story of Noah, we don’t often think very often about all those days he spent in the ark.  So, try to imagine you’re Noah.  You go into the ark, you and your family and all these animals and birds and such.  And it starts raining.  And it keeps raining.  And it keeps raining.  Maybe sometimes it rains harder and sometimes it rains more lightly.  Maybe sometimes it’s a total downpour, other times a moderate rain, maybe sometimes it even slacks off to a misty drizzle.  But it keeps raining.
It rains forty days and forty nights.  Now, Noah knew it was going to--God had told him so--but still, day after day after day of rain.  And we don’t really know whether forty was an exact figure.  Some say that was an expression that was used back then for an unspecified amount of time, sort of like the way we use a phrase like “a few weeks”.  We know more or less what that is, but we don’t know exactly.  So Noah may not have known exactly when the rain was going to stop.
Think how depressing that would be.  To have it rain, and keep raining, and keep raining.  Not knowing when it would stop.  Stuck on this boat.  No one to talk to except your wife, your three sons, and your sons’ wives.  Seven people to talk to.  Seven people who probably are not in all that good of a mood, any more than you are.  Seven people who cannot do a thing to change your situation.  You could go to the top deck and get some fresh air, and you’d probably need to after a while after being stuck below with all those animals, but it’s damp, humid air, because all it does is rain.
You think about what’s happened to the earth.  All your friends:  gone.  Your home town:  gone.  Your house:  gone.  All your family, except those seven people on the boat:  gone.  Your livestock:  gone.  All the hills, the trees, the grass, even the rocks:  gone, washed away in the flood.  Everything you had, everything you’d worked for, everything you enjoyed about your life, other than your family, gone.  Nothing left.
You talk about a Seasonal Affective Disorder.  Noah must’ve had it in spades.  That’d be an incredibly hard thing to deal with.  I start to get depressed if we get bad weather that lasts a couple of days.  This is bad weather for over a month.  And it wiped out absolutely everything.
And then, eventually it stops raining.  The sun comes out.  And you cheer up a little.  Except--you go to the top deck, and you look out, and all you can see is water.  No land anywhere.  Not even a hint that there might be land anywhere.  The entire earth is flooded.
And you have no idea how long the flood might last, either.  In fact, you don’t know that it’s ever going to end.  God told Noah that it was going to rain for forty days and forty nights, and that the earth was going to be flooded.  He told Noah to save at least two of every kind of animal and every kind of bird.  But God did not tell Noah that the water would recede eventually.  Maybe Noah assumed that, but maybe not.  And even if Noah did assume it at first, when time went by, day after day, week after week, month after month, Noah must have started to wonder.  “Am I ever going to get off this boat?  Am I ever going to set foot on dry land again?  Or is this it?  Is this how I’m going to spend the rest of my life, stuck on this ark, taking care of these animals?”
            I think most of us, maybe all of us, have times when we can relate to how Noah must have felt.  Because most of us have times in our lives when we’re in a situation we don’t want to be in.  It feels like bad things are happening, and we don’t know when they’re going to stop.  We feel like we’re stuck.  We feel like we don’t even have anyone to talk to, no one who’ll understand, anyway.  No one who’ll be able to help.  And we feel like we’re losing everything we had, everything we worked for.  We feel like we’ve even lost our friends and our family.
            And we fell like we don’t know how long things are going to go on like this.  In fact, we don’t know if it’ll ever end.  We wonder if things will ever get better.  Or maybe this is it.  Maybe this is how it’s going to be the rest of our lives, stuck where we are, in a situation we don’t want to be in, with no chance of anything changing.
            I’ll bet a lot of us have been there.  I’ve been there.  But here’s the point.  When Noah was feeling this way, what happened next?  The Bible describes it in four words.  It says, at the beginning of Genesis Chapter Eight, “But God remembered Noah”.
            God remembered Noah.  Now that does not mean God ever forgot about Noah, of course.  In fact, it means the exact opposite.  It means God was with Noah all the time.  God was with Noah when Noah was building the ark.  God was with Noah when Noah loaded the animals into the ark.  God was with Noah when Noah and his family went into the ark.  God was with Noah while it was raining.  God was with Noah whether it was a drizzle or a downpour.  God was with Noah when the rain stopped.  God was with Noah even when Noah was depressed.  God was with Noah even when Noah did not feel God there with him.
            And that’s not all.  God not only was with Noah, God did something about Noah’s situation.  It did not happen right away, but it did happen.  God sent a wind to dry up the water.  Eventually the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.  Then the tops of the mountains became visible.  Eventually, Noah sent out a dove.  The first time it did not find dry land, but the second time it did.  And eventually Noah and his family were able to leave the ark and go out onto the land.  God brought Noah through the storm.  And Noah’s life could begin again.
            When you and I feel like life has become overwhelming, when we feel like we’re stuck in a bad situation and there’s no one who can help and there’s no chance of anything changing, think about this story.  God remembered Noah.  And God will remember you.  And God will remember me.  God has never forgotten us.  God is with us all the time.  God is with us when it starts raining in our souls, whether that rain is a drizzle or a downpour.  God is with us when we’re depressed.  God is with us even when we don’t feel God there with us.
            And just as God did for Noah, God will do something about our situation.  It may not happen right away, but it will happen.  Eventually the downpour we feel like we’re in will stop.  Eventually the sun will shine again.  The floodwaters will recede from our lives.  It may happen slowly.  At first, we may just get some stability and rest.  Then, some hope becomes visible.  Then, we take a few tentative steps and find out that the situation really has changed.  We’re able to leave our situation and go on to a new one.  God will bring us through the storm.  And our lives can begin again.
            If you get nothing else out of this sermon series about Noah, I hope you’ll get that.  That no matter how depressed you feel, no matter how bad things seem, you should not give up, because your situation is not hopeless.  God is there, and God is hope.
            When Noah was at what must have been his lowest point, God remembered him.  When you and I are at our lowest point, God remembers us.  God remembers, and God acts.  God makes the storms of our lives come to an end.  God blows away whatever it is that’s overwhelmed us.  God makes the bad situation go away and puts us in a new situation, a situation with endless possibilities.
            God saw to it that Noah survived the storm and got a new life.  God will see to it that you and I can survive the storms of our lives and get new lives, too.

            

No comments:

Post a Comment