Self-help Articles

by Thomas G. Shafer, MD

Author's note: Noah is in the news again. Of course, there was that movie and some articles are coming out again about finding Noahs Ark. While this is a very instructional story for adults, I have found that the image of the flood and God destroying the whole world can be very frightening to children.

Noah was a good man for his time. That doesn't mean he was perfect, in fact he drank a little too much wine sometimes. It just means that he tried the best he could, and... he listened when God talked.

You have to remember that God hadn't yet given man the law. There are some who say this was because people just weren't ready and others who say people hadn't learned to read and write yet.

Maybe this was why God talked directly to people back then when it would have been much easier for Him to talk to them through his written word as He talks to us today.

Now, Noah lived in very bad times. Everybody else just wasn't listening to God. They were going their own way and doing terrible things to each other. Life was very hard and cruel for everyone.

Did you know that God has feelings? Since we are taught that He made us like Himself, we know He has feelings too.

So how did God feel, looking down on everything He made and seeing how things had gone so horribly wrong? We usually think He got angry but he really felt terribly, terribly sad. He loved every person on Earth. He made them all, and look what they were doing to each other.

(And the Lord regretted that He had made man on Earth and His heart was saddened.)

What happens sometimes when we feel this sad? Does God cry? Perhaps he tried to contain his great sadness but, as person after person refused to listen, the tears kept building up inside more and more.

But even though we had hurt Him so much, He wanted to save us and God just kept trying and trying until finally someone listened, Noah.

And what a thing God told Noah to do. Build a boat, the biggest boat in the world. In the middle of the desert build a huge boat.

No matter what he thought of the idea, Noah obeyed God. All his neighbors laughed at him and all that gopher wood and pitch sure cost a lot of money but Noah obeyed.

We can picture him building the ark step by patient step as perhaps God even put pictures in his head to show him how do things just right. You see, God will tell us how do things right, if we listen to His Word.

(...Noahs Ark won favor with the Lord.)

Finally, Noah finished building; then he had an even harder job. You see, God loved the animals, too. He made them just before he made man. The animals had done nothing wrong because God hadn't given them a sense of right and wrong.

So Noah listened again and gathered up the animals in pairs, seven pairs of each clean kind and one pair of each unclean kind. And he had to hurry. G-d's sadness was building and he could only give Noah a week for all that work.

But Noah did as God asked and He promised Noah his whole family: himself, his wife, his three sons and their wives would all be safe in the ark with the animals.

And then God cried. His sorrow was so strong that He cried for forty days and forty nights. His sorrow was so deep that His tears covered the whole Earth, even the highest mountains.

(And the floodgates of the sky broke open.)

Poor Noah had a hard time of it. He floated endlessly over the Earth for 150 days and nights. Food was running short but still Noah trusted God to keep him safe. The Lord had promised.

We can imagine God looking down one day and watching Noah and his family sitting down to eat what little of their food was left. "Wait," Noah said to his family. "We must remember to thank God for giving this food and His promise to keep us safe."

And then God's grief finally began to lessen and He breathed a great sigh of relief. Noah had remained faithful in remembering His Lord.

(And God caused a wind to blow across the earth and the waters subsided.)

Then, finally, the ark landed on dry land, high atop a mountain. And the ground dried and Noah and his family came out. "Wait," Noah said again. "We must remember to thank the Lord for keeping His promise."

Quickly, Noah built an altar to worship the Lord. And he and his family sacrificed and prayed. And God looked down and saw that Noah had remembered to thank Him.

He knew now that, no matter how terrible and evil man may become, some people would always stay faithful to Him. And God smiled.

And what a smile it was! God's smile was so beautiful that it came down to Earth and became the very first rainbow, alive with colors and happiness. And God told Noah what the rainbow meant, a sign of God's promise that never again would the whole world be destroyed.

(God blessed Noah and his sons.)

I don't know for sure but I like to think when I see a rainbow today it is because God has looked down and seen one of us doing a good deed of prayer or kindness. I like to think we still can make Him smile, even without something monumental like Noahs Ark.

About the Author:

Thomas G. Shafer, MD received his medical degree from the University of Virginia and did three years Post Doctoral work in Psychiatry at Penn State University. His 20 year professional career has been equally divided between Psychiatry and General/Emergency Medicine. He has worked with childhood hyperactivity syndromes as both a professional and parent. Dr. Shafer currently works for the Veteran's Health Administration.

Thanks to the Internet and modern software, Dr. Shafer revived a long dormant writing career several years ago. He has published multiple professional and popular works in such venues as The Journal of the Academy of Regression Therapy, the Jewish Magazine and, of course, SelfhelpMagazine. He is the Fiction Editor of SelfhelpMagazine and Associate Editor of the ART Journal.

His novel about his clinical work with Vietnam veterans is The Double Rainbow, published by Picasso Publications of Ontario. His address is: 213 Creekside Drive, Florence, AL 35630. (205) 760-9912.