By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry .

Genesis 8:13

I’m not going to take any credit for this post. My friend and pastor preached about the story of Noah yesterday. But this verse kinda did it for me, you know? It opened up like a flower in front of my mind and spirit.

The bible mentions only one window being made in the ark. The thing that makes this window different from most other windows is that it was in the ceiling, or roof.

It wasn’t on the side of the ark, so that people or animals could look out and see the damage that was being done to their world, the only world they’d ever known. Noah and his family were protected from seeing others who had refused to believe regretfully float by their view. Watching the world being destroyed would have been, I imagine, an EXTREMELY terrifying thing to behold! And God protected them from that awful vision by putting a window on the roof, instead of on the wall.

Noah and clan also couldn’t rely on their own conjecture to determine when would be a good time to get off that stinky barge, because they had no vision at all of the flood! They had to rely on God’s very specific instruction in order to determine just the right moment to disembark. All this was because they had no view of what was going on around them.

The only view they had was….

UP!!

They couldn’t look around at their circumstances, but only at the heavens above.

I kind of wish I didn’t have any windows on the sides of my life, either. I wish I could just focus on what God desires of me, and not get so distracted by what others want, or by what others DO. And I wish I didn’t have to see all of the pain around me all the time.

Seek the Lord and His strength; seek His face evermore!

Psalm 105:4

He may not have taken my “side windows” away, but there will always be a window to heaven for me, too!

When I look to Him, I find hope.

When I look to Him, there is peace.

There is even a whole bunch of joy!

As long as I’m looking through that window in the ceiling. 🙂