Relentless Pursuit

If you have been involved in any type of church setting, there is a good chance you have heard of the story of Noah and the ark. This biblical narrative takes place in the book of Genesis, and God instructs Noah to build an ark for him, his family, and a plethora of animals to take with him. The reasoning in why God instructs Noah to build the ark is because God’s knew that he was going to send a flood to desecrate all living creatures and humans on the earth – except for those who made it onto the ark that Noah built.

Currently, I am in a class titled Crisis and Trauma where we learn not only how to integrate traumatic events that occurred within the Bible into a framework of understanding from a clinical counseling lens. Just imagine if you were in Noah’s shoes… requested by God to build this massive ark, taking over 100 years to build, then gathering his family and two of each animal (male and female), in addition to waiting seven days on the ark for the rain to start. Noah and his family spend years and years in active obedience to God’s calling regardless of how odd and strange I could imagine it was for him to do so. His family probably also were constantly questioning Noah and wondering why he spent so much time and energy building the ark.

Noah, his family, and all of the animals all joined onto the ark and then after seven days the flood came. For a total of 150 days, the flood endured on the earth and completely wiped out the rest of humanity. This was not only a traumatic event because of the flood destroying and desecrating Noah and his family’s home, but they lost contact with all other human beings who lived on the earth. A single traumatic event can be categorized as the threat or experience of a death of someone you know. In this instance, everyone they knew except those within their family died. Additionally, they had to live without food or water, besides what God had provided for them. They had to live in a confined area with massive animals everywhere they turned. Their life and livelihoods had been turned completely upside down.

Thinking of disasters that we typically encounter within the 21st century such as hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, and other catastrophic natural disasters putting the flood that God sent to the earth just demonstrates his power and omniscience. It’s hard to even wrap our minds around how powerful this type of flood was because we can’t tangibly understand what that has looked like within our lifetime. Additionally, just conceptualizing to the best of our ability the magnitude of the flood puts into perspective the traumatizing reality that Noah and his family faced, during and after.

Noah and his family probably witnessed the death of many individuals they knew. Even this in and of itself is extremely traumatizing, and the healing that comes after this type of loss is huge. Understanding the impact of an event like this can help believers start to articulate and understand the impact that trauma has on our lives, and the lives of those who lived in the biblical times. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that traumatic events can happen to us or to the people we love. But the reality is that there is a high likelihood you or someone within your family at some point in your life will encounter either a large trauma or a small trauma of some kind. Together, with the help of the Lord we can take the time and space to heal those wounds.