January 4th

Genesis 8:1-10:32- The flood has happened, the waters are receding, and the ark comes to rest on Mt. Ararat. Check out this picture of the mountain. Gorgeous. Sometimes it's hard to imagine places in the Bible. I feel like I've seen so many flannel-graph pictures of Mt. Ararat and the ark and the rainbow of God's promise to never flood the earth again, but something about seeing the actual picture of the mountain is just too cool. It's crazy to imagine all of this under water. It's a snow-capped dormant volcanic cone in Turkey. 

Once the dove didn't return, Noah and his family waited a little longer before leaving the ark, until the water had dried up from the earth. The Bible says Noah was 600 years old when the floodwaters came to the earth, and that "by the first day of the first month of Noah's 601 year, the water had dried up from the earth." Once everyone left the ark, Noah built an altar to the Lord. He actually sacrificed some of the clean animals that he had taken on the ark, which seems kind of crazy to me. He took 7 pairs of each of the clean animals, so I guess technically he had some to spare. But talk about keeping your priorities in line. The entire earth has just been wiped out with a massive flood, and here you are sacrificing some of the few animals you have alive. That is a true realization that the earth and everything in it belongs to God, and Noah definitely shows a reverence and love for this God that has just protected he and his family from the great flood. When God smelled the sweet smell of the offering He said, "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. As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease." (Genesis 8:21-22) As long as the earth endures. Does that mean as long as it lasts? As long as it holds up? Or until the second coming of Christ? Ooooh, and I just found an answer for a question I had from January 1st. At creation, it seemed like God only gave us green vegetation to eat. It's after the flood that this changes. He says (Gen 9:2) "The fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything." So that's where the switch happened. Good to know. :) Then God makes a covenant with Noah, his family and all the animals that He will never again destroy the earth by floods. And the sign of that covenant is the rainbow.
    The last section is interesting. Apparently, Noah plants a vineyard and then has a little too much to drink. Next thing he knows, he's intoxicated and naked inside his tent. One of his sons, Ham, sees him and goes and tells the other two brothers about it. It's the other two brothers that cover their father. When Noah hears about this later, he curses Ham and his descendants and says, "Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers." Noah dies at the ripe old age of 950 years, and the rest of the passage, through the end of chapter 10, talks about the descendant lines of Noah's 3 sons.

Matthew 4:12-25: This section of Matthew begins to talk about Jesus' ministry of teaching. At this point, John the Baptist is in prison. Jesus begins calling his disciples. "Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." He first calls Peter, Andrew, James and John. He makes his way through Galilee, teaching, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing disease and sickness. Obviously, with all of this happening, news begins to spread. There's a Healer, and people are bringing their family and loved ones to Him. Some of the things the Bible lists Him healing are severe pain, demon possession, seizures and paralysis. How astounding would it be to have someone you loved be healed from what you thought was going to be a life long paralysis? Large crowds began to follow him.

Psalm 4:1-8: In this Psalm, David seems to be wrestling with a couple of things. First of all, David is crying out to God, begging for God to answer him. He's asking for God's mercy, that He will hear his prayer. On the other hand, he's also talking to the men of the land, asking how long they will seek false gods, sin in their anger and sacrifice wrongly. David is asking for God to intervene, to shine his light upon them. God fills his heart with greater joy than the passing food and drink that the men around him rejoice from. How often do I place my joy in things that are fleeting?

Proverbs 1:20-23 I'm just going to quote this, because I think it's beautiful.
*Note: "The Hebrew word rendered simple in Provers generally denotes one without moral direction and inclined to evil."
"Wisdom calls aloud in the street, 
she raises her voice in the public squares; 
at the head of the noisy streets she cries out, 
in the gateways of the city she makes her speech: 
'How long will you *simple ones love your simple ways? 
How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge? 
If you had responded to my rebuke, I would have poured out my heart to you
and made my thoughts known to you."

Perhaps God only opens the eyes of those that respond to His correction? 
I pray that my heart will always be open to His rebuking, so that I won't be marked a fool that hates true knowledge, or a simple one with a thirst for evil.