REMEMBERED!

 

I pick up my readings in Genesis 8-11 and Noah comes on the scene.  Noah is described as a "righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God".  Noah is lauded, yet consider what the Lord God said about the times in which Noah is living: "The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time."  Do you wonder what the Lord would have to say about the times we are living if the words were recorded? IS IT NO WONDER THAT NOAH STOOD OUT?

Noah is instructed to build an ark...ark for what?  He had never even seen rain!  Scripture records,  "And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him."  What obedience!  Noah and his family along with the animals, and that is another "I wonder", how does Noah get all the animals corralled and moving into an Ark? The Ark only had to house animals, Noah's family, and all the foods for the long months of rain.  Oh my, what about the sewer system? Scripture records that "the water flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days".  I cannot even imagine the sounds of the animals, Noah and his family's exhaustion in caring for the animals,  the complaints, and the smell!  I love the opening sentence of Chapter 8, "But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and HE sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded."   

Not that the Lord has a faulty memory, but the author wants us to know that GOD ACCOMPLISHES!  Every time in Scripture that the phrase is used, "God remembers"....HE ACCOMPLISHES.  In the Hebrew, the word, remember is the word Zakar, to call to mind or to mark.  Praise God HE remembers us, our needs, our hurts, our over-whelmedness, and HE accomplishes by responding in HIS timing, of course.  Will you praise HIM with me that HE REMEMBERS us and also that HE FORGETS our sins?  Read Micah 7:18-20 with me, "Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of His inheritance?  You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy.  You will again have compassion on us, you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea."  Depth of a sea?  Mariana's Trench, 36,037 feet deep!  What mercy!  What grace!  What love!  Calvary!  Forever learning.  In process, not perfection for sure!  #IHAVETHREESONS.