Noach 5773

With a booming ‘thud,’ the massive door swung closed and the ark was sealed tight.  Whatever was inside would survive; whatever was outside would perish.  The rain began to fall.

The Noah story lays out the blueprint of the ark, including the vessel’s dimensions.  But it never mentions windows.  I imagine that the ark had none, that it was both sound proof and pitch black.  Sound proof, so that the inhabitants couldn’t hear the screams of people drowning around them. Pitch black, so that the survivors wouldn’t have to look each other in the face, couldn’t see each other react to the sounds of horror around them, didn’t share their relief when the cries for mercy finally stopped.  (“Whatever on dry land had the breath of life in its nostrils, died.  God wiped out all that existed on the face of the earth—human, beast, reptile, birds of the sky—they were wiped off the earth; there remained only Noah and those with him in the ark” [Genesis 7:22-23].)  Only when the last sob petered out, only when the last finger stopped scraping at the door, only then, I imagine, did Noah’s fireflies start to glow so that the survivors could get to work.

It is so easy to shut our eyes to the pain and suffering around us.  We work and go to school with people whose bellies aren’t full.  We drive past homeless people.  We look past the bruises hidden behind sunglasses.  We ignore the overwhelming suffering of those in the developing world. 

Will you be like Noah, sealed inside a bubble, eyes closed to the need around you?  Or will you be like the dove, who travels out into the world, searching for opportunity, returning  and returning to offer help and hope?