God once sent a great flood upon the earth. It destroyed all but those God designated to continue their assignment to earth.
The survivors of the great flood were not so different from the survivors of catastrophes today.
We are currently in the midst of tragedies across the world. Some will die. Others will continue their assignment to planet earth.
When people survive a great disaster, rarely do they just pick right back up and live the lives they did before the catastrophe.
First comes intense gratitude they survived.
Then comes the questioning of why they survived. They look around and realize there were others who seemed more deserving of life, but who lost their lives.
Even if they did not have this thought themselves, often family or friends of those who did not survive, will tell them.
Besides the possible guilt survivors feel, they also discover surviving one disaster does not exempt them from other tragedies.
As other challenges continue, some survivors wish they had died.
But out of the ashes of calamity, often survivors find solace in each other. The trauma of powerlessness is replaced with a common desire to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again.
The feeling of control returns and is strengthened by others who have experienced the same thing.
If we survive, shouldn’t we want to prevent any future problems? Yes, that natural desire for good is good.
But we are not The Creator of Good. God is.
Therefore, whatever we do must be God originated, God designed and God directed. We must never forget that while we are God’s Hands and Feet extended, we are not God.
Genesis presents a very vivid picture of what happened when a group of survivors took matters into their own hands.
After the great flood, one would think the survivors would have been grateful to God for His Presence and Provision through the whole ordeal.
One would think they would have seen God’s Love, Mercy, Grace, and Provision. And this would have only led them into a greater trust in God for the new world He was entrusting to them.
Satan needed to stop the gratitude right there. He hated humans getting fresh starts. And He particularly hated humans trusting God. So he was ready to sow seeds of doubt.
As the survivors unkinked from their close quarters with each other and the variety of animals with whom they had just spent an extended time, gratitude was replaced with other thoughts.
Why did this disaster happen in the first place?
Why take away everything and everyone they had ever known besides the few who were left? Could not a few animals have been sacrificed and their closest friends survived too?
And what now? Why were they selected to be the clean up and start over crew?
And how were they going to know God would not come up with some other way to torture them in the future?
Oh sure God made a Promise never to destroy the earth again with a flood, but what about fire, disease or other things?
They knew two things. They had each other. And they were survivors. They figured if they stuck together, they would never let such a thing happen again.
Their communication with each other was unhindered. They all spoke the same language.
They said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
Genesis 11:4
Note: God was nowhere in their plan. They thought they were in charge.They were not building a tower to The Glory of God. They were building it to make a name for themselves … to show how powerful they were.
At the core of their plan was fear. Some commentators have wondered if they chose a tower because they wanted to be sure to be high enough off the ground if there was another flood. If this was the reason, it meant they did not believe God’s Promise.
It is interesting that they desired to build the tower that would reach to Heaven. Did they think their own works would gain them access to Heaven? It would not.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is The Gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”
Ephesians 2:8-9
And they were afraid of being separated. If they did not have each other, they knew they could not accomplish this giant task. If they did not have each other, they believed they would be totally alone.
Satan reinforces that thought. He wants us to believe all we have is each other … or him. He’s only too happy to offer his services.
So what happened with the tower?
God looked over their work. He loved these people. He had chosen them specifically to be the leaders of the new world.
But their fear and distrust of God had led to an arrogance that would have ultimately destroyed them from within.
Even though God was about to do something that would separate them for their own good, He spoke The Truth.
The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.”
Genesis 1:6
The same is true for us. But we must all speak the same language as God. We must be in agreement with Him.
Jesus said, “Again, I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven.”
Matthew 18:19
Note. If we all agree on the impossible, it will not happen. If we agree in accordance with God’s Will, it will happen.
“For nothing will be impossible with God.”
Luke 1:37
But God needed to get the tower builders’ attention. He caused each to speak a different language. And with that, they considered themselves powerless again. They stopped building.
And The Lord sent them to different places all over the earth. In God’s Mercy and Grace, the whole earth was repopulated.
Even though we can’t say for certain that all the people learned God’s Lesson, we do know The Word of The Lord continued, even to today.
In a future blog posting, I will tell you “the rest of God’s Story.” I will tell you of the great and glorious day when God brought all the different languages back together.
We are in the midst of a worldwide crisis of unprecedented proportion. There is the need for the citizens of this planet to be united instead of divided.
But in order to claim victory over what has become a clear and present danger, we must each first come into unity with God, Jesus and The Holy Spirit. And then, we must come into unity with each other.
It is the very thing Jesus prayed for. He prayed it, not only for His Followers, but for us who would come after them.
“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in Me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You.
May they also be in Us so that the world may believe that You have sent Me.
I have given them the glory that You gave Me, that they may be one as We are One —I in them and You in Me —so that they may be brought to complete unity.
Then the world will know that You sent Me and have loved them even as You have loved Me.”
John 17:19-23
