A Story of God and All of Us - By Roma Downey Page 0,1

the air," Noah adds, thinking of the doves and hawks living uneasily next to one another. "Then on the sixth day, all the creatures of the ground--which includes us! And we were granted paradise. Amazing isn't it? Paradise. But then..." Noah pauses, gathers himself. The thought of what he is about to say confounds him.

Mankind once had everything.

Everything. But then...

"But then Adam and Eve threw it all away! They ate from the one tree in paradise from which they were forbidden to eat. That was all God asked.

Nothing more. Don't--eat--from--this--tree. What could be easier?" Noah's soliloquy is hitting its stride, even as the storm grows fiercer. Thunder booms loudly, as if an explosion has punched a hole in the ship. "Wrong choices,"

he says bitterly. "Wrong decisions. This is the source of all evil--disobeying God. That's why, with one simple act of willful disobedience, Adam and Eve caused evil to enter the world. That's why we are on this ship. Because the evil that Adam and Eve introduced has spread throughout the world, and God is cleaning the earth so mankind can start all over." He looks around the small cabin at the few people who fill it. His story has taken their minds off the storm,

4

and he feels encouraged to keep talking. "That's why God told me, 'Build an ark.' " Noah pauses, remembering the humor in that moment. "I asked, 'What is an ark?' God told me, 'It is the same as a boat.' And I said to God, 'What is a boat?' "

Everyone laughs. They have lived in a desert their whole lives--not much water, let alone a need to build a special craft to float upon it.

God described the ark to Noah. It would be designed and built according to specifications that God dictated. This enormous ship would hold two of each animal. Once it was complete, God would soak the world in a massive storm, flooding all the lands and killing all of God's creation. Only the people and animals aboard Noah's ark would live.

Noah built the ship, even though his friends mocked him and his own wife thought him a fool. Why, he was miles from the nearest water, with no way to launch his vessel. Yet Noah kept building, one nail and one board at a time, constructing pens to house the tigers and elephants and lions and rhinoceroses. His great ship towered above the desert floor and could be

seen from miles away. Noah and his ark were a great joke, told far and wide, and many a man made the journey to see the ark--if only to shake their heads and chuckle at Noah's folly.

Then the first drop of rain fell. That first drop was not an ordinary trifle of rain, for it hit the earth with a mighty splat that portended the coming of doom. The skies turned from the clearest blue to gray and then to black. "Go into the ark," God commanded Noah. He obeyed and brought his family on board.

"I didn't need to be told twice," Noah reminds the rapt audience inside the small cabin. Each of them instantly remembers the race to get on board--

while also remembering the heartbreaking sight of friends and neighbors now clamoring for a spot on "Noah's folly." But there was none.

The rains that poured down were unceasing. The waters grew higher as subterranean rivers burst up through the earth's surface. Great tidal 5

waves surged across the land. Flash floods wiped away homes, markets, villages. People died by the thousands. The lucky ones were those who could not swim and drowned instantly. Those who knew how to stay afloat had time to ponder their fate, and that of their loved ones, before the waters pulled them under.

And as the land slowly disappeared, to be replaced far and wide by only water, Noah closed the hatch, knocked away the supports. Soon the water lifted his massive ship--which floated quite well, much to his relief--and they bobbed away, bound for only God knew where. But one thing was certain: God would save them from destruction, no matter how bad the storms and how high the seas.

Noah's story has had its desired effect. Everyone in the small cabin is now calm. Noah goes up on deck alone, and for the first time in what seems like months, the seas are calm. He knows the waters will soon recede.

The world starts over, thanks to Noah and his ark. God thinks of him as an upright man, and through