Reflections on the Great Flood

Do you ever think that God gets tired of dealing with us? Do you think that perhaps that was why he made the great Flood and destroyed everyone but Noah, his family, and the animals? He promised He would never do it again.... but do you think He gets tired of us? Do you think He thinks we are a bunch of whiners who can never get "it" right?

No. His love is so great and so perfect, that I'm sure He must've wept when all the people perished in the Great Flood. I guess sometimes death has to be a consequence for sinful behavior.

There are different kinds of death you know...there is the physical death that everyone will face at one point. There is a spiritual death when someone is going through a spiritual desert. There is the kind of death one experiences when a relationship or a job ends. Gosh...even getting a haircut is a death of sorts. (It is for me anyway.) Death ends things. But there is always something new after a death. Even physical death isn't final.....it is just a passage into another part of eternity.

I have experienced so many kinds of death these last several years. It has been exhausting, but now I'm in that transition phase between death and the next chapter of my life. I am still in the waiting phase. It has stopped being painful. Now it is just sort of an awareness that I'm waiting and an acceptance too. I have been grossly humbled by humanity as well as God. There is nothing left for me to do except to wait and pray.

So, that is what I am doing: waiting and praying. It is not a passive waiting though. I am praying a lot. I am thinking a lot, and reflecting. I am reading a lot. I am trying to listen. I am trying to be mindful of how God might be moving around me. I am trying to trust, but it is hard because so much trust has been broken on so many levels.

I have learned some hard lessons these last several years. I have learned that not everyone is who they appear to be. I have learned that human love stinks and only God's love is truly Real. I have learned that as much as we are called to be a community, we are often left alone. I have learned that I can be very resourceful and that even though nobody really seems to want my small amount of gifts and talents, that they are still there waiting to be put to good use.

It is like the novel that starts..."It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." These last few years have been the worst of times for obvious reasons. But in the intensity of the "worseness" of these times, an equally intense purification is taking place. The purification might lead to the "best of times". It feels like perhaps a Purgatory on earth. It is like my soul is a lush garden and God has been weeding and some of the flowers have been pulled up along with the weeds and there are now bare spots. In time perhaps God will plant new things and even things that are more beautiful than what was there before. Maybe the plants will be hardier.

I have experienced my own personal Great Flood these last years. Many parts of me have been drowned. What is left floats and waits in the little ark that is my soul. Waiting for the dove to bring back an olive branch.

.....I'm watching for a rainbow to signify that the Great Flood is over and land has been found. Then I will step out of the ark and start my life anew.