Our re-creation doesn’t happen overnight. Genesis 8 narrates the re-creation of the world following its un-creation (the flood). The floodwaters are finally restrained. All of the destructive happenings from the previous chapters begin to move in reverse. The spirit/breath of God again blows over the waters, as She does at the first creation (Gen. 1:2). Hope for life to go on is clearly emerging…but the remnant of life that has survived this disaster is – quite literally – not out of the water yet.
Biblical scholar Kathleen O’Connor helpfully reads Genesis, through the lens of trauma studies, as a way that ancient Jewish people coped with the disaster of the Babylonian Exile.* Her insights speak to the universal human experience of losing hope, certainty, and security in the life that we know or expected for ourselves. In the flood, all is washed away, and we feel or fear that we are drowning. But God “remembers” Noah. The word does not mean that God had forgotten, but that God is now turning to act with salvation.
It takes the waters equally as long to recede as it took them to rise. As we wait, we notice that the ark stinks of life stuck in place. We send out birds, hoping that they will reveal signs of life, but they keep coming back, proclaiming that there is nothing out there for us. Until finally the dove stays gone.
Sometimes it is silence which finally reveals new life outside the ark – a bird gone missing; an empty tomb.
God, bring us into this new era of peace, void of wars, and full of a deep and radical love for everyone. Bring us back to your vision of Earth, a perfect Garden where nature and humanity thrive together. Help us realize this brave new world, and love us while we stumble upon the pathway to you. In Christ’s name we pray, amen.
Rev. Will Norman
Campus Minister, The Table at UGA
* Kathleen M. O’Connor, Genesis 1-25a (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, 2018).
Words for Waiting 