Noah, observing the cleansed earth

Genesis 6:8

But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.

The waters having receded from the face of the earth, the new life growing upon it once more, the growth of life spreading from the rim of the flood region, where the dove flew, finding the olive leaves which showed to us the dimming of God's wrath against his creation, the work of his fingers, the perfection of it spoiled by the disorder of a thousand rulers, that which all creation hints at, seen in its small imperfections, manifested in disease, the war of tree against tree and animal against animal.

Consider for example, the plants of the forest. Walk amongst them and you will find on the surface a pulsing life, a variation co-existing together in a seeming harmony, one plant shading another, the animals living among them, here a fruit, there a fungus, moss in the dampness, seeds spread by the wind, a diversity of color, size, etc. This is the testimony of the eye, giving evidence on first glance of the wisdom, creativity, joy, life-giving quality of God and his works. In all God's work somewhat of his character is made manifest, from the glory and power of the wide heavens, to the consideration in the life of the smallest creature. This is the echo across creation of what God said when he made, a declaration we carry on record from the first one, the man who first experienced God and whose line possesses and passes down the promises, our progenitor Adam, who heard and told that God pronounced all things good, a pronouncement which like all God's words contains a delineating and filling truth, both in accordance with reality and itself a shaper of reality.

Thus creation is good, and indeed, the very word itself implies goodness, for the creation stems from the maker, and in this way aligns with the maker, coming forth in a line from him, in accordance with him. What is good, at least as we see it, is no more than a manifestation of his essential character, a glimpse of him, his overruling, absolute as only he is absolute, though in a certain way of thinking, relative. But this is an unhelpful thought, before which we ought to close our mouths, cover them over lest we offend him who has such marking out power, for before such an absolute, there is no comparing power, as though one could redefine the self outside of him, redefined relative to him, giving the soul power of choosing. This was the serpent's path, in truth a setting the self up against God, being God before whom we remain insignificant, small. He alone has a defining power, for he alone created, and from the creator comes all categories. Can we be but what he has made us to be? This, after all, is no more than to say that we are obeying creatures, a lower order than him who made us, thus living and existing to obey, this our worship before him. This is what we were bound to in Adam, the obedience which was laid out before him as a choosing creature.

He absolute, we obedient. This is our fulfillment, the goodness of God perhaps relative in that perverted sense, but yet this is the pathway that offers to us happiness and life, for from him flows life, this alone exposing the great dependence we live under, that he alone gives us life! Such freedom as we imagine we purchase in our disobedience is a choice perhaps, but no life and therefore a greater slavery than what men imagine a return to God would entail. Submission to our created order is the only freedom, for what God made for us, indicated in the diversity of our bodies and souls, is the joy of a free obedience, a riot of interconnection, and order beautiful, precious, that freedom which in the promise we will one day be restored unto.

What freedom is there in that self-following? Men constrained to the seeking of pleasure, having no ability to act against themselves, all the time seeking that absolute in themselves, though what cries out in this but that man was not made for it? O foolish man, would that you could not live in the weaknesses of your nature, for what we see as weaknesses are no more than what God has made, he making all things good, and thus that weakness is his doing. Take yourself as you are, O man, and live! If God is good, his creation is good, and if you exist then you are creation, for look at yourself and what surrounds you. It is all other, a thing you can in no way control, this only a weakness if God is not good, but he is good! If he is good, then live in your weakness, for it loses its weakness and simply becomes.

O men, such were the preaching I gave, to long for the promises, to repent of self-obedience, to flee from the violence, hatred, bloodshed, exploitation, emnity, sexual depravity, all that broke out from the heart of man as he went forth from Cain and the ways of unfaithfulness. O the ancient hope of Adam, broken, when he saw his son ruined, and Cain a hater! Men against men in an orgy of power, blood, brokenness! And one line, alone calling on God, clinging to the promise he gave, the head of the serpent crushed, the woman's line reversing the ancient curse, the explanation of all this pain and suffering given, to the smallest child and the oldest man. Yes this was my preaching to them, I alone, my voice rising amidst the clamor of a thousand opinions, alone in the plain, as men spread their uncleanness throughout the land. There I labored, building the ark with my sons over the long century, this ark among them as a shelter, always calling, always inviting, a voice that spoke the mercy of God amongst the chorus of his wrath and anger, for the world he had build would not for long bear under the sin of man.

Yes, and look closer, O heart, at the forest, and see, see the roots of a thousand trees entangled in a relentless struggle for the diminished water of the soil! See the strong and the weak in a hardened opposition, the weak fleeing and the strong mastering! See the diseases among them hidden but spreading! See the pain of every creature, the hunger, the violence, the world itself reflecting the horror of man's heart, a fallen creation through which sin has spread in shadow! Yes, see this and mourn, mourn that ancient evil, and mourn that your heart has brought it!

O world, what we have lost!

Righteousness, the rightness of things, this is God's to restore, to return to the earth. How will he do this? Understand the patterns which he gave me, that I may remember them and understand again what is laid out for me, what my walk is, that I may, O Lord, my your great mercy, follow the pattern of my ancestor Enoch! Remember, O heart, this great key of the saints, the rememberance of God's words like a stamp upon our soul! This is our circumcision, our seal, the words made real in the power of his presence.

I, like my father, clinging to the promise of God, watching as the world around me deteriorated in the increase of man's wickedness (increase, perhaps in the cummulative effect, though it was always the inclination of man's heart, always, everywhere, in every occurence, to follow the evil therein). Then, bursting forth in like kind to the promises (more direct in my experience of it perhaps, but no less real in what it held out), the voice of God instructing. That it was God's voice was never questioned, nor that in its instructions it must be obeyed. If the word was real, then it was to be obeyed, the two imply and complete each other, one an invisible reality and the other its external proof.

Yes, his voice came and by faith in its reality, I build the ark, though we were far from any water. But, it must be said, the apparent likelihood of the fulfillment was hardly a factor, for whether we were close to water or far is only a consideration if we are thinking of things according the relativity of man's power, as if we should prepare for battle against such and such because of his nearness and likelihood of attacking us. But God is God, his word an absolute that stands apart from likelihoods. There were no other considerations except that he said he would do it. So we build the ark.

But look deeper and remember the promise, O son of Adam, O Noah! There in this world of sin we stood and believed in the words of God. There we heard of the coming day, the day when God would flood our world with his cleansing water, with it wiping all life from the face of the earth. There we trembled, my sons and I, before the power of God and with one voice called out to the men of the world to save themselves! There held out to us was the salvific promise of God, that ark, that refuge, that great shelter into which we fled as the day came, the shelter our faith ushered us into, not meritoriously, as if in hearing of God's salvation we had earned it! No, we fled into those doors, my sons and I, huddled before him, saved from the wrath of God as the world was remade.

We came forth, O maker, to a new world, a world cleansed, but in shadow only, a world representative in its newness but of no actual newness, for the waters that spread over it were simply waters, containing also in their essence the spread of sin, and thus of no ultimate value. No, the power of something greater is needed to renew us here, and as life grow it will remain in the patterns we have long seen, the competition, the brutality, the strong and weak opposed, the blood of men once more to spill out into it. There the rainbow, that new promise of his grace as a mediation of all his actions to us, that he will bear up under the sin of man until the promise is fulfilled, this adds even to the promise a new dimension, a new depth that my sons will pass onward as we wait.

O new earth, you are new in the hope of your arrival each day! You are new in the renewal of the promises to you this day! You are new in the reminder of the cleansing presence of God, that renewal of the reality of your power, which will sit with man in this record and memory, that he may be restrained! O filter through the mythologies of every man this anger, this wrath, that in their error they may yet be restrained, letting the echo of it fill the earth and call men back, call them back, that earth though it shudders may endure until you bring forth your promise from it, and in this renew it, for the promise is for the curse that shudders everywhere in her! And I, Noah, will worship you here for the mercy and grace of your promise, the sacrament of the rainbow before me, passing onto my sons both the memories of this great cleansing, and the mercy of the God who preserves all those that he chooses, a people who posses this promise, awaiting the fulfillment that is to come.

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Genesis 6-9
Noah is called a "preacher of righteousness" in II Peter 2