Did you realize that Noah and his family and all the representative animals stayed INSIDE THE ARK for a year AFTER the 40 days of rain??? Wow.

Did they doubt they would ever see dry land again and stop that bobbing in the water? Did they fear that God had abandoned them?  Do I sometimes fear that too?

Well, He hadn’t, and in fact He gave them a fresh new world to live in and populate. And all living creatures could now be food! Yum, fried chicken, bbq spare ribs, grilled steak, and sauteed grasshoppers! And oh, wow, they would now see RAINBOWS (the natural kind) and so remember God’s faithfulness every time it rained.

Of course they blew it too (like I do every day).

Also, there are more genealogies and hard-to-pronounce names to read. (Don’t give up.)  Did you notice names like:

—Tarshish, Egypt, Caanan, Sheba?

—Shinar, Nineveh, Babel?

—Gaza, Sodom & Gomorrah, Philistines?

—Eber (beginning of the Hebrews), Nahor, Terah, Abram & Sarai? Lot?

All these will come up as we go through the Bible. Can you think of stories already that are set in these places and with these people?

—And Uz. Did you notice Uz?

Beginning tomorrow and the following 11 days, Uz is where we will be in our reading.

HUH? you say. How’s that?  Well Uz is where Job lived, and he lived about this time in Bible history, so we will visit him, his woes, his wife, his friends(??), his epiphanies, and his (and our) God.

Please don’t say “ugh” to Uz.  Stay with me! I know we will learn some truths from the book of Job. And then we’ll return to the Patriarchs on January 16.