Minimalist Bible: Noah's Ark - Two by Two
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Written by Chad - |
God has given me the idea to pursue a personal design project of creating minimalist posters to share the awesome stories of the Bible. If you missed out on previous posters, don't worry, I have created a landing page where you can easily catch up. Check it out here.
The next poster series comes from a story that we have all heard from our childhood—Noah's Ark. I'm excited today to reveal Two by Two, part three of a seven part series.
Two by Two comes from Genesis 6:17-22 (NLT) which says, "'Look! I am about to cover the earth with a flood that will destroy every living thing that breathes. Everything on earth will die. But I will confirm my covenant with you. So enter the boat—you and your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring a pair of every kind of animal—a male and a female—into the boat with you to keep them alive during the flood. Pairs of every kind of bird, and every kind of animal, and every kind of small animal that scurries along the ground, will come to you to be kept alive. And be sure to take on board enough food for your family and for all the animals.' So Noah did everything exactly as God had commanded him."
If we could look past the scariness of the "everyone is going to die soon" situation and focus on the spectacle of all the living animals showing up on Noah's doorstep, this would be the coolest zoo exhibit of all time. It had me asking the question, "How?" How did the animals know that they needed to head toward Noah? How did the gazelle NOT get eaten by the cheetah on the way? Did the carnivores show up on a different day than the herbivores did? Also, how the heck did the termites not eat the boat apart? Everything was made of wood! Personally, I would have left them behind because they could have put the whole world in jeopardy if they had gotten out of their little cages.
The only thing that I could come up with is that God spoke directly to the animals and they listened to him. The animals LISTENED because they knew that they would live and not die. It makes me wonder, why we—as intelligent human beings—don't listen to Him?
In Matthew 13:12, Jesus said, "To those who listen to my teaching, more understanding will be given, and they will have an abundance of knowledge. But for those who are not listening, even what little understanding they have will be taken away from them." This same version of this verse can also be found in Mark 4:25 and Luke 8:18. To me, listening to Jesus must be important. So important that three out the four gospel authors wrote about it. So why do we tend to continue to ignore Jesus?
Maybe we just don't want to hear what He has to say because deep down in our hearts, we know that what He is going to say will be true and that scares us. Truth hurts, but Truth brings life. We need to open our hearts to the Truth of Jesus. If we don't, we will utterly die and that's not fun. I'm going to say it again, "It's not fun to be dead." If we are dead, than we can't do the things that we were created to do. We will never fully live until we actually listen to Jesus, though.
Back to the verses from Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus tells us that we will receive "an abundance of knowledge" and "more understanding" by just listening to His teachings. By listening to our Creator, we will have a better understanding on how to live a full life and the knowledge to achieve that life. Just like God told the animals to head to Noah's ark, God will point us in a direction that will lead is to life and not death. Take the time to listen for God's voice because it will change your life forever.
