Unexpected gifts are always a reason to smile.                                                                                                                       

So you can be sure I was smiling when a co-worker stopped me in the hall a while back and told me to wait where I was while she ran to her office to get something. In a jiffy she was handing me a large box. "I know you like Noah’s Ark," she said.

I was surprised, to say the least, and touched that she was not only giving me a gift out of the clear blue sky but that she had paid attention enough during our conversations, and in occasionally observing the "stuff" in my space, to know what I liked.

When I returned to my office I opened the box to find a very unique cross with the vertical beam painted in shades of a fish-filled ocean. Carved on the horizontal beam was the ark, with Noah, his wife and a plethora of animals standing on the deck looking out across the water. Above them hung a rainbow.

What a wonderful gift, I thought, especially now with the summer coming to an end and the exquisite air of fall just around the corner; a time of changes.

What my very generous co-worker wouldn’t have known is that, over the years, I have come to see the image of Noah’s Ark as symbolic of the promises of change inherent in the seasons. There was a time when I saw change as a frightening thing, but life, with all its unexpected ups and downs, has led me to the perspective that every new season, just as with every new day, brings with it unique conditions, unique experiences and, most importantly, unique opportunities. Now, rather than being perceived as an end of things, change heralds new beginnings.

I guess that’s why I have always found the story of Noah so captivating, and why I have a penchant for collecting images of Noah’s Ark.

This was a man, and a family, who had a powerful experience of a new beginning. There’s no doubt that everyone around him thought he was crazy, but, in spite of that, Noah put his trust in God, his family put their trust in Noah, and an ark was built!

Even the structure of the ark itself symbolized a total trust in God given that it had no motor, no sails, no form of directing the craft other than the will of God. It was more a refuge than it was a boat—a shelter for those who, at the prospect of an impending deluge, had placed their trust in their creator. When the storm was finally over and the waters receded, it was from this ark that Noah, his family and the created world all began a new day, a future of unlimited possibilities.

Thomas Carlyle, British historian and essayist, once wrote: "Today is not yesterday: we ourselves change; how can our works and thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue always the same? Change, indeed, is painful; yet ever needful; and if memory have its force and worth, so also has hope."

For me, Carlyle’s words speak aptly of the person of Noah, a person of hope, whose faith and trust in God strengthened him to endure the pain of change, and who could have easily, upon stepping off the ark onto dry land, uttered the fitting words, "Today is not yesterday…"

Jesus, also, could have said the same thing to his Apostles when he appeared before the terrified, huddled mass of men who were lost in the fearsome grip of change: "Today is not yesterday…."

And isn’t it amazing that God, through the fluid mystery of time, has created the future to come in this way—one day at a time? There is such hope in that.

Life has also taught me that when God, who is Hope, penetrates a soul every moment is Resurrection, every breath a moving from darkness into light, the future a promise of new beginnings to be held in prayer.

Remember the tea kettle – it is always up to its neck in hot water, yet it still sings!  ~Author Unknown

Copyright © 2004 Mary Regina Morrell