Our salvation comes from God

We all want this stuff to STOP. Wars, hurricanes, people dying — the earth a wreck. I feel that if I see one more bombed building or house floating in the river or a child living in a car trunk I'm going to come apart. And I'm not the one living it. What must they be feeling, those who are right there in it? 

People are calling Hurricane Helene's flooding of “biblical proportions.” What exactly does that mean? The story as I know it is 40 days and nights of rain, and the water “prevailed more and more upon the earth.” Every living thing died. Only Noah and his family, and the animals in the ark made it out. 

You sent that flood, God. Why? It's just the kind of story that causes some people ever since to think You are capricious and cruel — if You even exist. Certainly not a God they want to know. 

It's the start of the story — the “pre-flood” details — that don't get talked about. How You saw the wickedness of man “was great on the earth. "How “every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” How You were “sorry” You had made man, and You were “grieved” in Your heart. 

You said to Noah — the only one who walked with You back then, “... the earth is filled with violence” because of mankind. You were done with it. You could have ended Your entire creation then and there. But You did not. You saw Noah walking in “integrity,” and You gave him a second chance. 

The “prevailing wisdom” has it that earth is suffering in the hands of humankind — that we've done all this damage. That's nothing new. It suffered in the hands of careless people in the biblical flood, too. It lost its animals and its vegetation. It drowned. 

The earth was created to be our home. Violence has touched it. In fact, thousands of years after the flood, the Apostle Paul wrote, “For we know that the whole creation groans” waiting to be “set free.” I hear its groaning, God.

Paul says something else, “... even we ourselves groan within ourselves” as we people wait for redemption. And, therein, is the hope in all this. You have something better for the earth, for its people. Why is that even hard to believe? You did not give up on it in the flood — and You aren't going to now. 

I don't know if the present evil is greater than in the days of Noah. I do know there is one huge difference between then and now. Jesus, braving the violence, has come to show us Your heart — and Your redemption. You are again giving humanity another chance. 

You never intended the earth — or anything in it — to be our salvation. That comes from You, the Creator. Somehow God — somehow — as these horrible scenes “go viral,” give me eyes to see Your rainbow.