...than in Your arms..."
I was enjoying the first album by The Violet Burning this morning on the way to work. This deadline is really, uh, here. I've got 2 days, 1 hour, 34 minutes, and 7 seconds to finish this issue...and I'm about 7 days' worth of work away!
We'll see what happens here...
I wish I could call ACL Fest up and say: "Thanks for taking care of me and the press this past weekend. Since I gave up the weekend before my final week of deadline, could you send about five staff members over here and help me catch up?"
hahaha
I only wish it was that easy.
We have chosen to home school our girls and sometimes (rarely) I actually help my wife do this. One project I'll help our kids do soon is go outside and measure exactly how big Noah's Ark was. Genesis 6:15 says: "The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high." That's pretty long. It would take up the entire grass area of our beloved Hutto High School football field. At only 25 yards wide, that would take up the space between the hashmarks; and at 15 yards high, that'd be somewhere near the top of the goalposts. I bet there'd be a commotion in Hutto if I started building such a ship in that location.
One beautiful thing about the ark was the door on the side. It says in 7:16 that "...Then the Lord shut him in." Apparently God was the one that closed the door. It was God in His judgment and wrath that held his hand out to desperate people trying to get on board, as if to say, "Speak to the hand." My point is not to make light of that, because it was a very stressful thing. Imagine if you had to say no to someone's request to come aboard the ark, knowing that your refusal meant their certain death? This was a gracious thing for God to do. It doesn't mention that anyone beat on the sides of the ark and screamed to get in. But if that happened, it'd be a terrible thing to fathom.
This is perhaps the kind of fearful brokenness we should have when we consider the reality of Hell. We cannot be glib or arrogant about it, because we have been shown mercy, not privilege. Thinking that someone we know or meet or see is going to hell should make us weep.
Posted by Doug Van Pelt at September 20, 2006 10:31 AM