Noah's dove

After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him. Genesis 8:6-12

Noah stands on the deck of his ship, anxiously scanning the endless expanse of water: is there – oh please, Lord! - any land to be seen? It’s getting on for six months, this lock-down – a long time to be cooped up with just his wife, his three sons and three daughters-in-law, plus of course the inhabitants of his floating zoo. How long, O Lord!

He sends out a raven, but day after day it just reappears for want of a branch to rest on. He sends out a dove – will it be able to find somewhere? No: back it comes. Oh well, give it a week and try again. This time… oh dear, there it is in the distance heading back that evening. But - wait a minute! Has it got something in its beak?

It comes closer. Noah reaches out his hand to receive it and – yes! – an olive leaf, a fresh olive-leaf. A sign of hope. The waters, at last, are going down. Thank you, Lord!

He waits another week and sends the dove off again, and “this time it did not return to him”. It’s over! – at long last the end is in sight!

Reading this story again I couldn’t help but draw a parallel with our present pandemic situation. How wearisome! How exhausting and frustrating! Will it ever end?

All right, I’m probably being a bit over-imaginative. But if so, well, please bear with me.

Why did God send the flood? It’s spelt out pretty clearly in Genesis 6:5-7: “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the face of the earth… the Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, ‘I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race that I have created…’”.

God seems to have had two things in mind: cleansing, for planet earth needed to be washed clean; and judgment, for human sin had to be brought to account.

Each day I pray, as very likely you do too, for this horrible virus to be overcome. And no doubt it will be – there will come a day when, so to speak, “the dove will not return”. And that will be wonderful.

But the question arises: Will we be any cleaner than we were? Will we be properly chastened and repentant?

Not physically cleaner, of course; but cleaner in terms of behaviour and habits of mind and thought. Will this pandemic have the effect of shaking us out of our complacency, our childish triviality, our selfishness and greed, our indifference to the needs of others, our rampant materialism, our downright immorality? Will our consciences and motivations be any cleaner? Jesus declared “blessed” those who are “pure in heart” (Matthew 5:8); will we be purer in heart than we were pre-lockdown?

And will we be humbly chastened by the reality of divine judgment? I’m not suggesting, of course, that God is actively punishing those who have suffered most, and even died, over the last year. That isn’t the kind of God he is.

(Jesus makes that very clear in passages like John 9:1-12, where he explicitly bangs on the head any suggestion that a blind man was born that way because either he or his parents had sinned; or Luke 13:1-5, where he does same regarding a group of worshippers who were slaughtered by the Romans as they offered sacrifice; or regarding some unfortunate people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when a tower fell and crushed them.)

No. But God is a God who allows certain things to happen in order to bring us to our knees before him: a God who issues a “wake-up call”, if you want to put it like that. And I don’t think it’s wrong of us to see the pandemic in that light.

Imagine Noah rushing to show his family that olive leaf. Imagine too that day, another week later, when once more he sent the dove off. And imagine that electrifying moment when he looked at the anxiety-stricken faces of his family and said: “The dove hasn’t come back!” Can you imagine an explosion of tears of joy?

That day will come for us. True, Noah had to be patient, and so must we. But it will come. The question is: Will we be better Christians, better people, when it does?

Lord God, we are in trouble – it frightens us and makes us aware of our folly and sinfulness. Please forgive us our many failings and have mercy upon us. Please hasten that day when the dove does not return. Amen.