Day 3

Genesis 7-9 and Matthew 3

Genesis 7+8 - The Flood. Okay so God gave Noah a week to pack the ark with a crazy number of animals. Then once they were all inside, He made it flood from beneath them, and made it rain. So essentially water was coming at them from everywhere. When it finally stopped raining, Noah sent birds out to see if there was dry land. When a dove brought back a leaf proving there had to be plants and therefore land, Noah still waited for God. Noah was on a huge boat stuffed full of animals for 10 1/2 months! And he didn't get off until God said it was okay. Imagine the faith required to be Noah. He had to build a ginormous boat, make sure he got pairs of all the animals, pray that the boat stayed together and wait on God's timing for everything. No wonder God picked Noah for the job.

Genesis 9 - So Noah and his family are told to repopulate the earth and God sent a rainbow to remind us that He has promised never to flood the earth again. Then Noah gets himself a little tipsy one night and decides to strip off and go to sleep in his tent. His son Ham finds this funny and tells his brothers, his brothers don't think it's funny, they cover him up. I guess despite our relationship with God, we can still stuff up and do stupid things.

Matthew 3 - John the Baptist and Jesus' Baptism. I like this chapter, it starts with John, coming out of the wild, wearing fur, eating bugs and preaching. And people actually listen to him and let him baptise them. Then seeing everyone was doing this the Pharisees and Sadducees decide to do it too. John calls them a brood of snakes, tells them that unless they are serious about changing their lives, they would be chaff burning in a never-ending fire.

Then Jesus gets baptised, I kind of see this as the time when Jesus kind of steps away from being in the world and starts his work as the Christ. God even opens up heaven and marks Jesus as His Son! How awesome would it have been to see that!