THE ARK

The Word of God was a still small voice that spoke to my very core.
It came in thundering silence, it grew to a deafening roar.
It filled my nights with visions, my days with blinding light.
But what was this ever-recurring message from Spirit inferring?
And was my perception unerring?  Could what I was hearing be right?

"I will destroy the man I created, removing him from the earth.
Man, and beast, and creeping thing, and fowls to which I've given birth.
But Noah, you'll be rescued, and two of every kind.
You are the chosen patriarch, responsible to build an ark
that floats above the watermark preserving life as I've designed.

"Make thee an ark of gopher wood, and rooms shalt thou make in the ark.
Pitch it well within and without with pitch before you embark.
For length: three hundred cubits, and fifty cubits wide.
But thirty cubits for the height.  A window shalt thou make for light —
a window for the raven's flight when the waters on earth subside.

"And all that is flesh upon the earth, wherein is the breath of life,
shall die in the floods that I will send, but not thy sons and wife.
And every living creature preserved with you and yours,
shall enter with you two by two, both male and female, to renew
life on earth when your journey's through, and the ark is on solid shores."

I assembled this ark to the specifications of Spirit.
His Voice was directing me, and I continued to hear it —
"Take unto thee all the foods that are eaten to store."
So I gathered a provision as the Spirit gave me vision,
and I stored it with precision, till the ark could hold no more.

I gathered the animals two by two, each one after his kind.
I gathered them male and female, exactly as God defined.
I gathered them to preserve them safe with me and mine.
And God said, "Into the ark now bring with you two of each living thing,
thy wife and the wives of thy three offspring, and stay till I send you a sign."

So we entered the ark as the storm and the rain clouds descended.
Depending on Spirit to send us a sign when it ended.
Knowing that all would be safe in the ark until then.
For forty days and nights it rained, till store and stock were sorely strained.
But no one in the ark complained at the rigorous regimen.

The ark was an old/new covenant forged between Spirit and man.
The covenant of oneness that vanished when Adam began,
whose mortal descendants now perish into the dust.
The thought that man was made from mud, that God created flesh and blood,
was vanishing beneath the flood, as fleshly thinking always must.

All in whose nostrils was breath of life, and all on the dry land died.
And every living substance was destroyed in the great floodtide.
But God remembered Noah, and every living thing
that entered with the patriarch into the safety of the ark,
waiting above the watermark, for the sign that Spirit would bring.

Day seventeen of the seventh month, the ark finally came to rest.
It landed on Mount Ararat, and there it ended its quest.
We knew that the waters had now begun to abate.
We prayed as the receding tide forced the rising floods to subside,
anticipating, still inside, what Spirit would communicate.

I opened the ark's one window when the fortieth day had passed.
A raven flew so we could discern how long the floods might last.
To and fro in the earth he flew but didn't return.
I sent a dove as well to fly over the floods to verify
just how much of the earth was dry, but the dove came back in his turn.

The second time I sent him forth he returned with an olive leaf.
The third time he did not return, to the occupants' relief.
So we knew that the waters were gone from off the earth.
And God said, "Go forth of the ark.  Let every creature disembark.
Both passengers and patriarch must give to the world new birth!"

So then I removed the covering, and the face of the earth was dry.
And every living thing in the ark went forth to multiply.
A rainbow hung in the clouds as we heard from Spirit —
"A covenant", said God on high, "that life on earth will never die
again in waters from the sky."  And we had survived to hear it!


      Home                        Back                       Next