Forty days: all day, every day; rain, rain, rain.  Finally, this morning, the rain stopped.

Just yesterday, we sensed a difference in the incessant flow of rain that had been so utterly consistent.  Instead of the steady, heavy drumming of rain on the roof of the ark – never easing for a moment – there were times when, for a few minutes, the volume of the ceaseless noise actually reduced.  During those times, visibility out of the window was noticeably better too.

But very early this morning, I woke up.  With the slight disorientation of sudden wakefulness, it took me a while to work out what had woken me, but I finally understood: it was the silence and stillness outside.

Down inside the ark, it is not easy to tell what the time is, or even whether it is light outside, so I climbed to the window platform and looked outside.  The window was very cleverly designed to make sure that no rain could get in from any angle, whatever the intensity of the rain or wind.  It worked wonderfully, but the platform was a very noisy place to be during that first forty days.  After a while it made your ears hurt, and there wasn’t anything different to see anyway.

On this morning, however, things were different.  It was still very early and the coming of a new day showed only in the faintest hint of a glow in the east.  The sky was clear and the stars were brilliant in the moonless sky.  A great stillness seemed to be spread over the face of the water, and the reflected stars moved gently in the calmness.  Smooth and still, the earth seemed almost to be resting after a titanic struggle, and an overwhelming feeling of peace filled me.

No longer would God look on the earth and see evil and violence, and, for the first time, I began to wonder what would happen to the new earth.  Savouring the present silence, but dreaming of a new world in which we could live without fear, I stood and watched the light slowly grow in the east until, suddenly and silently, a golden path was drawn across the waters between me and the flaming disc which slid effortlessly above the uninterrupted horizon.  Water, and only water surrounded me in every direction.  No visible birds or fish, boats or islands, mountains or coastlines.  We were entirely alone.

But being alone on the face of the waters did not mean we were alone in the ark.  Maybe the animals had sensed a change, or maybe this was simply their normal dawn chorus without the competing noise of the rain, but whatever the reason, the noise within was a cacophony and it was clear that the animals needed their morning attention.  I couldn’t keep ignoring them.

I took a last look around the watery vista with its unexpected beauty.  Ever so gently, a breeze was beginning to play on the waters.  Since then it has strengthened until the unending sound of wind[1] has replaced the drumming of rain in our ears.  But that was still in the future as, turning, I left the window and went about my work.

Everyone was euphorically happy that morning.  Even the animals seemed to be glad that the time of unrelenting destruction was over.  After forty days, we had all become accustomed to the idea that our acquaintances, our neighbours and even our relatives were all dead.  We knew that there would be no exceptions and that somewhere down there in the newly-still water was the old life we had left behind.  Many people we would not miss.  Violence had been a way of life for them and a freedom from the fear of their brutality was something we had all enjoyed as the ark rose up on the waters.  Others, however, had been good friends who we would miss, friends on whom we had expended much effort in warning them about the coming flood.  But none had believed us enough to come with us.  None could see that the Creator’s coming judgement was just.  And we couldn’t keep them as friends and obey the Creator.  When push comes to shove, you have to make choices.  We made ours.  Sadly, though, they made theirs too, and so we went into the ark by ourselves.  Just our family, alone.

The last year had been the worst – a very trying time for each of us.  It was only when we had been in the ark for two or three days that I realised how much stress we had been under.  Those harrowing times must have made us finish the work faster, but I know that there were times when my father wondered whether we would all make it into the ark alive.  I don’t know why people get pleasure out of making others suffer, or why they like to intimidate and harass at every turn.  My wife must surely have been looked after by an angel when that group of young women decided to attack her at the well, first verbally and then physically.  No-one recognised the man who came to her aid, and I certainly couldn’t find him later to give him my heartfelt thanks.  If I could have found him, I would have invited him into the ark too.  But I guess his work had been done, and we were all so thankful.

I won’t go through the list of other near misses and terrifying incidents which convinced us to keep putting the finishing touches on the ark even through the hours of darkness in those last few weeks.  We only slept when we just couldn’t keep our eyes open any more.  And we didn’t go to any of the community meeting places either if we could possibly avoid it, and never alone.  After the incident with my wife, my father, my brothers and I took our largest containers and filled them from the well in the middle of the day.  Our women didn’t go there again.  But that took precious time and left the ark unprotected too.  We couldn’t afford to do that either after the “accident” six months before when we had returned unexpectedly early to find our neighbour gently fanning the flames of a small grass fire towards the ark.  He had assured us that he had been fighting the fire, which had started by accident, but it certainly hadn’t looked that way.

“Love your neighbour” was the lesson our father and mother had taught us.  Our father had told us that if we wished to walk with God, we needed to be like him in this way, so we really tried.  But it was certainly a case of unrequited love.  Our neighbours hated us and most of them had taken specific actions to make us suffer.  Complaints about everything we did.  Stolen materials and equipment.  Ropes that broke unexpectedly.  The list seemed endless, but now, I just want to forget about it all.  What hurt us most was that even the people who loved us and would never have tried to hurt us personally, even they would not make any stand at all to help us.

Then, on the tenth day of the second month, seven days before the rain started, God’s final instructions had come to my father[2].  In that last week we were far too busy to worry about anything but doing exactly what he told us.  Each day, thousands of animals had to be taken inside and put into the safest places possible.  They were all utterly docile, but even so, we were incredibly busy.  All the food had to be double-checked and properly organised.  No-one came near us to cause trouble during that whole week, and it was almost as if God had put a fence around us.  Late on the sixteenth, we finished with the animals and everything was ready.

During the night, we dismantled the boarding structures and stowed them aboard – we would need them for unloading the animals at the end.  Ham went round with the pot of liquid pitch and daubed all the places where they had been attached while Japheth made a final round of the supports around the ship to make sure the ark could float freely away from them.  My father and I went over the entire roof and window structure, knowing that these would be severely tested the next day.  It was a difficult and dangerous task in the dark, but my mother and my wife belayed the ropes and neither of us slipped badly.

Towards dawn, we finished these last-minute tasks and got ready to go aboard for the last time.  Collecting the last few things that we needed from our home, we climbed up into the ark just as the light of day began to diffuse abroad under the leaden sky.  We were exhausted and went straight down into our living areas, intending to sit down for a while before coming back to have a last look around to make sure we hadn’t forgotten anything.  However, as we reached our living quarters, we heard a gentle thud from above.  Not a loud noise, but it sounded final, somehow.  I rushed up to the door and found that the chocks we used to hold the door open had all been removed and sat in a pile in the corner.  The door was shut.  It was a big door, but I could normally move it a bit by myself.  I pushed as hard as I could, but the door didn’t move.  God had shut us in[3].

Only a few moments later, the rain started.  Heavy, pounding rain.  Rain that made the roof resound like a drum, with us inside the drum.  The noise of the rain continued to grow louder over the next few minutes, but that was all we heard from outside.  Of the people, our neighbours, we heard nothing.  Within minutes the ark was floating, and for the next few hours we had a rather rough ride.

I tend to be the one who likes to work with numbers as a bit of a game, so after we had been sailing for thirty days, I tried to work out how much manure we had moved from the various animals.  It took a while to compute, but when I got the answer, it made me glad that my father had started us on the job straight away.  A couple of days of leaving that to build up would have made the job overwhelming.

Well, that’s all I have time to write at the moment.  Animals are hard task-masters!   Although it will be much easier to dump the manure over the side when it isn’t raining, I’m sure it will always keep us busy for any part of the day when we’re not feeding them.  Fortunately, it is never unmanageable – each day’s work can always be completed as long as we start early and work hard.  It keeps us fit and we always go to bed tired.  No spare time to muse, and maybe that is for the best.  Perhaps when we land I’ll have more time to write.

[1] Genesis 8:1
[2] Genesis 7:1-4
[3] Genesis 7:16