He Always Comes

If you are a parent, then you know the feeling of watching your children, wondering if they will need you to come to their rescue. Whether they are swimming for the first time, riding a bike for the second time, or just living life as a child, you know that at any moment, you children may need you to save them. You spend your life watching and waiting for that moment to come. It always comes.

If you are a good parent, then you also know that sometimes you need to let your children struggle for a bit, not long enough to risk their lives, but long enough for them, and you, to learn their abilities to grow and improve their situation. So you wait, cringing at times at their tears, but you wait. This is the painful part of parenting, but it is the important part. If you always rescue your children before they learn their own abilities, they will never grow, so you wait for the time to come. It always comes.

God is the perfect parent, and He knows better than we, just how much we can endure struggle before it breaks us. He never takes His eyes off our struggle, and at any time is willing to rescue us. Afterall, He has been on a saving mission since He created us. These past few days, the readings from Genesis (today’s reading is below) remind us of the love and constant care of God in our struggle. As I wrote in yesterday’s blog, His Love is Always Greater than Death, God reveals that He never abandons His creation. “But God remembered Noah…” Indeed, He never forgot. The flood was for Noah’s salvation, and God never took His eyes off Noah, his family, and all the animals in the Ark. God allowed the flood to last only long enough, so that when Noah and his family left the Ark to start a new generation, evil had been thwarted, and God continued with His plan for Salvation.

There is another reference today in the reading from Isaiah that reminds us of the salvation that is to come. “In that day the root of Jesse shall stand as an ensign to the peoples; him shall the nations seek, and his dwellings shall be glorious.” (Isaiah 11.10) It should come as a comfort that during Great Lent, which we all by now admit is a true struggle if we are “doing it right”, we are reminded of God’s watchful eyes and His saving plan. The Cross is coming Sunday to give us strength to continue our Lenten Journey. God is watching us. He remembers we need Him. He is waiting for when the time to come. It always comes. He always comes.

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights. On the very same day Noah and his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons with them entered the ark, they and every beast according to its kind, and all the cattle according to their kinds, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth according to its kind, and every bird according to its kind, every bird of every sort. They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh in which there was the breath of life. And they that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him; and the LORD shut him in. The flood continued forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark floated on the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed so mightily upon the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered; the waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, birds, cattle, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm upon the earth, and every man; everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. He blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days. But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided; the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, and the waters receded from the earth continually. At the end of a hundred and fifty days the waters had abated. – Genesis 7.11-8.3