Having grown up in the Midwest and on the East Coast, I have seen my share of thunderstorms and torrential downpours. Yet living on the West Coast for the last 20 years, I can count the times on one hand that I have heard the sound of thunder. We just don’t get that kind of weather. This week, we had five days of rain, complete with lightning, thunder and even a tornado. As I was driving down a flooded road, I was reflecting on God’s first rainstorm.
1 Then the LORD said to Noah, "Come into the ark, you and all your household, because I have seen that you are righteous before Me in this generation. 2 "You shall take with you seven each of every clean animal, a male and his female; two each of animals that are unclean, a male and his female; 3 "also seven each of birds of the air, male and female, to keep the species alive on the face of all the earth. 4 "For after seven more days I will cause it to rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and I will destroy from the face of the earth all living things that I have made." 5 And Noah did according to all that the LORD commanded him. 6 Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters were on the earth. 7 So Noah, with his sons, his wife, and his sons' wives, went into the ark because of the waters of the flood. 8 Of clean animals, of animals that are unclean, of birds, and of everything that creeps on the earth, 9 two by two they went into the ark to Noah, male and female, as God had commanded Noah. 10 And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were on the earth. 11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. 12 And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights.
Genesis 7:1-12 (NKJV)
Up until that time, there was not rain! We can see that in an earlier verse in Genesis:
4 This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, 5 before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown. For the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; 6 but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.
Genesis 2:4-6 (NKJV)
Can you imagine the panic that people must have felt, with the skies opening up? If it never had happened before, you would have no concept of whether it would ever stop, or if it would get worse. Their worst fears were imagined, as God flooded the earth and destroyed His creation, apart from eight people and a representation of each animal.
As I was driving the other night, I began to see that first rain in a different light. Imagine each raindrop as a tear from God. Can you imagine the sadness He felt to destroy His own creation? When we study the book of Revelation, we read about God’s coming judgment on a sinful earth. Though He promised that He never would destroy the earth by flood again, He will destroy the earth in another way. Throughout Revelation, we read about His judgments, but what is most apparent is that even in the midst of judgment, God has grace! His goal is for all to believe, and knowing that what takes most of us to find Him is to be flat on our backs looking up, He often puts us exactly in that position. His grace falls like rain and washes us clean. We are washed daily in His Word. We once were like scarlet, but are now white as snow. And each one of those raindrops represents the pain we place on the heart of God with our sinful lives. After the rainstorm, make a fresh start with Him by confessing your sins and asking for His forgiveness. There's no fresher smell than right after a storm and you can have a fresh start today!
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