Genesis 8:6-22
The Daily Office
Well, the Daily Office lectionary covered the flood and the ark over the weekend. Now we come to the aftermath: "And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, 'I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.'" Huh? God will never curse us again because we are evil? And think back to the Friday reading: "The Lord saw…that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." You mean that the reason God destroyed the earth is now the reason God will never destroy us again?
Yes. God knows now that the human race is irredeemable. Yet, God also knows that he made us, that breathed life into us. Is God now to say that God made a mistake? No. But if that mistake is to be corrected, God now recognizes that he will have to take the decisive steps. Redemption must come at God's initiative, not ours. And God also knows that this "correction" must be a process. In that process, God will call and we will respond as best we can, quite often with one step forward and two steps back, hopefully more often with two steps forward and one step back. But God will have to work with us on our schedule.
Here we are, however many millennia later. Have we moved forward any from that ancient catastrophe? Is the intention of our heart any less evil? Ultimately, only God knows the answer. But he gives us enough of an answer in today's reading for us to know that God's patience is infinite, without end, forever and ever.
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