LAST WORD ARTICLES...
Last Word -
Flood
The inescapable event at this time is the immense flood which has drowned a city and many of its people. Anything that might be said or written about such a disaster is bound to be inadequate, if only because it is beyond anything most of us have experienced.
In his series of novels 'Strangers and Brothers', long since out of fashion, C. P. Snow depicted Sir Hector Rose, a civil servant who becomes Permanent Secretary of the (fictional) department responsible for directing British work which ended in the United States with the production of the atomic bomb. When the news of the detonation of an atomic bomb on Japan by a U.S. bomber reaches him, the normally urbane Sir Hector exclaims that there are times when events are too great for men. A man who commands a powerful administration in a powerful country is stricken and helpless in the face of events.
One of the events recorded in the book of Genesis is a major flood, which is shown to have drowned all humankind except the one man (and his family) who listens to and obeys God. Though archaeologists have found evidence to suggest that there was indeed an immense flood and several reports on it can be found in the written records of other cultures, the relevant point is not the event but Noah's faith, unshaken in the face of an appalling disaster.
What runs through so many of what are sometimes referred to as 'bible stories' is not so much the stories as the record of the actions springing from a wish to do God's will. It is the heart of the prayer the disciples were urged to use. Perhaps we can see the core of the prayer in the words "Thy will be done". The life and death of Christ supremely shows the working out of obedience to God's will.
Bob Mclean
Last Word Article Archive...
To view other articles click here