For the Washington, DC area, the national weather service is advising us to be prepared for a major snow storm this Saturday. About two feet of snow is what they’re predicting. That’s pretty significant. And as I was reading the scriptures today, it reminded me of the Noah and flood.
Only a few verses before the story of Noah and the Ark in Genesis 6, God is noting that the people are multiplying and becoming progressively more and more wicked. Then, he declares that the number of man’s years will be 120.
After reading it through several times, doing some word-research on my own and then hearing from the puritans (John Calvin, in particular), I feel pretty confident in saying that God was giving humanity 120 years before wiping almost everyone out with the flood. If that is a reasonable interpretation of the text, then that’s pretty amazing.
Though things were in sad shape and getting worse, God left them with over a century to turn. Of course, they didn’t, and that sucks. But, God’s grace and mercy in that are beautiful.
It keeps us in the tension between eagerly waiting and praying for Christ’s return, yet at the same time praying that God would have patience and mercy and bring in many, many more who don’t yet believe. And that’s just where we are. Waiting for the ‘flood’, knowing it will come, yet hoping that God will wait and more will be saved.
That’s pretty cool, I think.
