DYNAMIS!
A publication of St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral
Wichita, KS
Genesis 8:4-22 (3/28) 1st
The
Flood And Baptism V ~ Entering the New Life: Genesis 8:4-22, especially vs.
22: “All the days of the earth, seed and harvest,
cold and heat, summer and spring, shall not cease by day or night.” Those who emerge from the
waters of the Baptismal Mystery, like those who came out of the ark after the
Great Flood of waters, enter upon a new life, a life sheltered under
God’s promises. Feet and
hooves, claws and wings emerged to a cleansed earth assured that life would
“not cease by day or night.”
Similarly, God promises those who come up from the waters of Baptism
“through the washing of regeneration,”[1]
a life illumined by the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5).
How do we realize and obtain the blessings of this reborn life? The experience of the righteous Noah
provides the example: with the eye of a servant, he watched to discern
God’s will. He waited upon
God’s direction to come out of the ark. When he emerged, his first action was to
worship. Similarly the new life in
Christ is lived by watching, waiting, and worshiping.
As the last of the furious rains ended and the ark rested upon the
mountains of Ararat, Noah watched
that he might continue to move in the will of God. He observed the order of things and
their natural interaction that he might see God’s hand at work. He opened
a window in the ark to the new life beyond and observed. Just as then, the way we watch makes a
difference.
St. Nikiphoros the Hesychast tells of St. Antony seated at prayer on a
desert mountain. Suddenly and
urgently, St. Antony sent two monks with water “along the road leading to
Great shifts and changes happen around us continually in all aspects of
life: physical, social, and spiritual.
Most of these, being beyond our control, begin and end with God. The first work of a servant of Christ
for realizing the fullness of regeneration is to “look unto the hands of
[our] master[s]” (Ps. 122:2), to discern what God is doing, how He is
calling us to act. Such
watchfulness must be continuous; otherwise, the heart may be wounded and our
birth into the new life in Christ will be disrupted, injured, and possibly
still-born.
As Noah watched, he tested the conditions. He sent out a raven and then a
dove. Each of these brought him
signs that “the water had ceased from off the earth” (Gen.
8:8). Still Noah waited (vss. 10,12),
and as he waited, in the words of the Baptismal Liturgy, God “didst send
unto them that were in the ark of Noah [His] dove, bearing in its beak a twig
of olive, the token of reconciliation and of salvation from the flood, the
foreshadowing of the mystery of grace.”[3]
Observe: Noah waited for God, and only when the Lord spoke did the
Patriarch leave the ark. The
combination of waiting, watching, and testing is essential to discern
God’s will fully, for the enemy constantly sows both good and evil
thoughts to distract us from God’s highest and best. Let us wait for God, for He alone leads
us in truth and teaches us (Ps. 24:5).
And when God directed Noah to leave the ark, the first thing the
Patriarch did was to make a “holocaust offering” to the Lord, a sacrifice
in which the entire animal was consumed by fire, to signify the total surrender
of self to God. Regeneration in
Christ requires total worship and full surrender of the self. The heart must say: “Thine own of
Thine own we offer unto Thee, on behalf of all and for all,”[4]
by which we give self totally to the will of God in all our ways.
We have put Thee on, O Christ our God. Teach us to watch and wait for Thee alone, O merciful One, that we may be victors even unto the end, through Thy crown incorruptible.[5]