5 Months Adrift

Genesis 7 and 8

I am contemplating what it would be like to spend five months on a boat with my immediate family and a whole lot of livestock. It could not have been a pleasant experience. First, because it would smell really bad. Second, because it would be noisy. Third, because there would be very little to do except clean the boat and wait.

The act of clearing the earth of people didn’t take very long. People were gone in a few days. But, the process of cleansing the earth took longer.

A repentant life works on the same principle. Leaving a life of sin is a simple thing. Realizing your behavior needs to change and then you stop doing whatever was damaging to your relationship with God. Cleansing yourself of the desire to sin takes longer. It is a process that requires patience and dependence on God.

It often feels like you are in a prison. On occasion I am called upon to help someone who has been caught in the trap of chemical addiction. I offer them the opportunity to go to Teen Challenge, a nine-month to a year program for addiction deliverance. Most of the time, the addicted person refuses the offer because they don’t want to spend that much time separated from their world. The ones who do accept find deliverance from their dependence on drugs. Those who choose a short term treatment program nearly always remain trapped in their dependencies.

The people who entered the ark weren’t the same when they disembarked from it. They spent five months separated from the world they had known. When they left the ark, that world was gone. They had learned to depend upon God for their survival. They had learned to form deep personal bonds with each other. They had a new perspective on what is important. They had a mission to accomplish when they left the boat.

That is what happens to us when we allow God to do a complete work on our lives. Separation from our comforts and dependencies feels like prison, but it leads to freedom.