Building an Ark

It would seem the drought has ended, and the liquid blessings just keep coming. And coming. And . . . uh . . . coming. I’m hesitant to ask God for more provision, for fear of sounding ungrateful. But those ark dimensions . . . I’m thinking I might need a blueprint and some supplies pretty soon. I already have Superman on contract to build the thing, but I’m not exactly sure where to find gopher wood. The only thing that comes to mind is the little bits of bark chewed and spit out by gophers . . . but that could only be used for pressed particleboard. I don’t think that’ll hold up. And once the ark is built, there’s the whole animal thing. Can we just send them to the San Francisco Zoo this time, to wait it out? I’ll do my best with the puppies and kittens. I’ll even feed the rabbits, and I’ve got more than enough chickens. But the snakes. Will anybody really miss them? I think not. I started thinking about this ark plan last Monday, when I was driving along a country road. My phone rang. It was Superman: Him: Where are you? Me: About 20 miles from home. (Gave him my exact location.) Him: Find cover. Now. I’m looking at the radar, and you’re about to be hit hard with hail. Me: Uh . . . I’m in middle of no and where . . . Him: Well as soon as you find shelter, get under it. I did as I was told. The next shelter was an old hay barn, a little ways off the road. Basically a tin roof on poles, but it was better than nothing. I pulled onto the private property, behind an RV that looked like it had been there a while. Sure enough, within a couple of minutes, hail beat down. Only the wind was so hard, the hail came up under the hay barn and pelted the side of my car. That’s when I decided to pull beside the RV, so it would block me from the hail. And it worked. Five minutes, and the bad stuff passed. That’s when the real trouble began. I tried to pull out, but my tires just spun. And the more they spun, the further I sank. Talk about being in some deep . . . uh . . . mud. I called the S-Man and assured him I was safe. And that I wasn’t going anywhere. He promised to come as soon as he could. Then I noticed a sign on the property that read, “Sanger Dairy.” So I used my handy-dandy smart phone to Google their number, and within a few minutes, the kind dairyman and his wife appeared, with a big ol’ honkin’ four-wheel-drive truck. To no avail. We needed a tow truck. Again with the handy-dandy phone, I Googled a local towing guy, and within a half hour, I was on my way, even before Superman arrived. All that to say . . . next time I’m taking the ark. This flood has brought an end to the drought in Texas . . . and is a reminder that God never removes His goodness from us forever. He may withhold good things for a season, but His mercies are new every morning. Every dry spell will come to an end. But along with the blessing of full tanks and wet fields comes tragedy, as well. As I write this, people are still missing, swept away by fierce floodwaters. As I write this, people have lost their homes, their cars, their places of employment. And I will never understand how blessing and tragedy can coexist. I suppose I could say something trite like, “Without storms we wouldn’t know what it’s like to walk on the water,” or “Without floods, we wouldn’t have rainbows.” But right now, with so much devastation, a rainbow is the last thing on my mind. So instead, I’ll keep adding my prayers to everyone else’s. I’ll do what I can to ease the pain and suffering in this world, to build arks, and to open its doors to as many as I can. Except the snakes. They’ll have to arrange for other transportation. “I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth,” Genesis 9:13.