The Hope-Filled View from Your Tiny Window

Introduction

We creatures are, in ourselves, weak and helpless when confronted with the difficulties of life in a fallen world.

Among the many manifestations of this weakness is our inability to control time. While this is something we might not think about very often, we are surely more prone to lament our inability in this regard when we wish we could change the timing or (especially) the duration of our trials.

In Genesis 8 we find what was surely one of the greatest trials in the history of the world: the aftermath of God’s flood judgment. A study of this text reveals three key truths that can sustain us when we find ourselves in circumstances we would not have chosen and are unable to control—something that is true of so much of life.

God Is Great

The beginning of Genesis 8 comes, of course, in the wake of Genesis 7, where we read of the power and greatness of God as He causes the floodwaters to multiply and prevail on the earth. It is this same great God who remembers (or, who “is mindful”) of Noah in 8:1, and “caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the water subsided.”¹

The great God of creation is pictured here as using the same power by which He created all things (compare the similar wording in Genesis 1:2) to continue making good on His promise of salvation (cf. Genesis 3:15; 4:25; 5:29). God, in His power, causes “the fountains of the deep” and “the floodgates of the sky” (literally “the windows of heaven”) to close, so that the flooding would cease.

Compared with the timing of creation, however, the timing according to which God causes the floodwaters to recede seems painfully slow. Surely the God who spoke all things into being in six days could have dried the earth in a moment by the power of that same word. Instead, He causes it to take 150 days—approximately five months—for the earth to dry (Genesis 8:3).

Man Is Small

In contrast with almighty God operating the windows of heaven, we find Noah in verse 6 opening “the window of the ark which he had made.” Apparently, Noah couldn’t see much, because he proceeded to send out two birds in order to get a sense for what was going on outside the ark.

It is, of course, obvious by inference that there is a world of death outside the ark: every last man, woman, and child met his or her death in the flood. This reality is reinforced by the contrast between the raven and the dove in verses 7–9: whereas the dove found no resting place for its foot, the raven (one of the carrion birds, which are famous as scavengers and dead-animal eaters) was content landing and feeding on the corpses floating on the surface of the water.

Between the dark reality of death outside the ark, and the responsibility Noah bore to sustain the life inside, the difficulty of his circumstances must have been unimaginably intense. As he looked out from his relatively small window, and learned what he could by sending out birds, what could have possibly enabled Noah to endure on the path God had called him to walk, so that creation life could eventually return to the earth?

God’s Promise Endures

Noah’s sustenance in the aftermath of the flood could only have been the same as that which sustained Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane and on the cross: that the One operating the windows of heaven was being faithful to His promise (cf. Luke 22:42; Hebrews 12:2).

Noah’s father, Lamech, had connected Noah’s birth with the seed promise of Genesis 3:15 (the first promise of the Messiah in the Bible), prophesying that Noah (whose name means “rest”) would be God’s means of bringing “rest” to the creation (Genesis 5:29).

Chapters 6–8 bear repeated emphasis on Noah’s “perfect” obedience, a declaration connected with his trust in the promise that had been passed down through Seth’s line (cf. Genesis 4:25) to his father, and then to him (Genesis 6:9, 22; 7:5; 8:17–18).

Noah’s faithful obedience is perhaps most powerfully evidenced by the magnitude of his sacrifice in 8:20. Having worked so hard to preserve seven pairs of each clean bird and each clean animal, Noah willingly sacrifices a substantial percentage of these animals that were supposed to repopulate the earth, and on which Noah and his family would depend (in part) for their food (cf. Genesis 9:2–3).

In effect, Noah is saying to God: “I surrender all to You. I won’t try to do this by my own strength. These clean animals I’ve worked so hard to preserve—and which are part of what I will depend on for food that will sustain my life—they are Yours, and I will sacrifice them to You.”

Application

Do you know what it is to be in circumstances you wouldn’t have chosen and cannot control? Do you know what it is to wait longer than you’d like for your season of hardship to end?

Remember, as you survey the situation from your tiny window, that God is in heaven, and His view and His plan are reigning sovereign over every detail.

He has made His promise, and He has fulfilled—and is fulfilling—His promise, including in your hardship. He wants you, like Noah, to have a broken heart (Psalm 51:17)—and in your brokenness, in your surrender to His good purposes, to trust Him with everything you are and everything you have. Your trust is not misplaced, your obedience is precious and pleasing to God (cf. Genesis 8:21), and you can’t even imagine the beauty and joy and glory of the new creation He is bringing soon (Revelation 21:1-7; 22:12).

¹ Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are from the Legacy Standard Bible (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 2021).