2023 Daily Lenten Journey – Day 22

Growing up with loving but strict parents is a struggle that pays dividends in blessings. When we made mistakes as children, our parents corrected our behavior. The correction was normally in two parts if our parents loved us. First, we learned about our mistakes. Second, we received new expectations that considered our limitations. God does the same thing.

And when the LORD smelled the pleasing odor, the LORD said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.  While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”  And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.  The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every bird of the air, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered.  Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.  Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.  For your lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning; of every beast I will require it and of man; of every man’s brother I will require the life of man.  Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image.  And you, be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly on the earth and multiply in it.”

Genesis 8:21-9:7

When God brought Noah and his family out of the Ark, He made a promise to never destroy the Earth again. This new promise came with a new expectation for us humans. We were still expected to be fruitful and multiply. Afterall, Noah’s family had to repopulate the Earth after the flood.

Understanding that the human heart easily turned toward evil, God created a framework for our life. The framework was meant to fight the evil in our hearts. We were forbidden from eating anything with its life. So, the second dietary law was established. The first, was to not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and we know what happened with that law. In God’s constant mercy, He gives us another chance to follow His law.

Our new chance at ‘getting it right’ came with, as you would expect, another warning. “Whosoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.” As we know, God always comes through with His promise.

I don’t want to end today’s post without a comment about Global Climate Change. There is a great deal of anxiety that life will be destroyed if we don’t change something fast about how we engaged with the Earth. I invite you to read God’s promise again and ask yourself, “Will the Earth ever be totally destroyed by God?” It isn’t that we shouldn’t do a better job as stewards of God’s creation. But at least we can live with the hope that His creation will NEVER be totally destroyed. That should give us some hope, and hope is always a good thing.