Friday, February 27

After the flood God made a covenant with Noah.

“Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all living creatures. The bow (the rainbow) shall be in the clouds; when I see it, it will remind me of the everlasting covenant between God and living things on earth of every kind.” Genesis 9, 15-17


God has kept his covenant. He has not destroyed us. Apart from gigantic meteors in the past, huge glaciers that gouged the land, tsunamis and the destruction of ancient species, tectonic shifts, apart from those before and after Noah, God has left the earth intact. It has a life sustaining atmosphere, temperatures in which people can live, bountiful sources of food and water, energy pouring on the earth from the sun and a luminous beauty that seems to have been formed in heaven. To that extent God has kept his promise. He has not broken his covenant.

But Noah’s descendants have broken it. They have spread across the earth in growing numbers, concerned only for themselves like locusts, polluting, destroying, denigrating those who protest, willfully ignoring how much they depend upon the goodness of the earth. They have gripped it by the throat and are choking it to death.

What might God do other than turn elsewhere and create a race of beings with, perhaps, less free will, with more of his own wisdom, with greater humility about their place in the universe? Then, we might hope, the everlasting covenant could be kept.


May we be ever mindful of the earthly gifts granted us by God through his covenant with Noah. As we begin each day may we commit ourselves to actions that will help preserve our air, water, plant life, even the smallest of creatures, for the benefit of our children, and our children’s children. Amen.

Rev. Dane Gordon, Honorably Retired & Elder Judy Gordon