I'm so thankful there were animals on that ark with Noah.

I've never ever thought about the story of Noah this in depth before, but the happenings of today forced me to.

Luke and I have been insanely busy, it seems, in the last two weeks. Today after we did grades at school we went to the "Y" to work out, then did our Bible study lesson for youth group, then went to youth group to lead the study. As I did the study I got a little scared that I would not be able to lead it well at all.

The lesson was on "Does God Punish Us?"

Well, does He?

In all honesty this is a question I've been asking myself off and on the last three weeks. The lesson asked other questions like, "If He does punish us, what does that look like in your life?" "Are all bad things that happen in life punishment for our sins?" "Do bad things happen to good people, and if so, why?"

Ugh! Could these questions be hitting any closer to home? I felt so unable to offer answers, so I decided tonight we would just discuss, and be ok with not coming to any answers if that was the case. We talked a lot, and I shared, which in a way was healing.

The lesson used Noah as an example of a righteous man who was having some very crappy things happen to him. The part that was the most encouraging to me was thinking about how (1)God told him this would happen, (2) He gave him the supplies and instructions for his survival, and (3) He gave him the animals.

God does the same for us, I suppose. He tells us bad things will happen. The rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous alike. "In this world you will have trouble..." Trouble is a guarentee. However, God also says He will provide for us during our trouble. He will give us the comfort and encouragement we need. He is also so good that He will provide your material needs--He will sometimes provide more than what you need. Thirdly, God gives us the animals. Like I said, I'm so thankful for the animals on that ark. They provided Noah and his family with food, something to do so that their focus wouldn't be totally on themselves during this really tough time, and lastly a hope. That's right, the animals were a hope. They were like a down payment on the new earth that would appear after 40 days. If Noah had any doubt that God would follow through on His promise to bring the land back again all he had to do was look at the animals. God could have easily created more animals, just like he would create more humans, but I'm taking comfort in the thought that God put the animals there to show Noah there would be a future and a hope. Joy will come again. The story of Noah brought me a lot of comfort today. I'm looking for my hope.