Life Lessons From Biblical Parents

We are slowly getting back to our posting schedule here.  I was excited to get to this account because it was based on people other than Adam and Eve.  I also saw some things that I had never seen before. 

Noah showed his family that he trusted God whether it made sense or not.  As parents and wives, we need to make sure that everything we do, and every decision that we need to make, is brought before the Lord in prayer and then we need to listen for His answer. When we trust that God is leading us and is showing us the decision or choice that we need to make, sometimes to others, our decisions may not make sense.  As the leaders of our home (I am speaking of the husband/wife team here), it is so important that our children see us following the leading of the Lord instead of the peer pressure around us from others whether it be from family, friends, or acquaintances. 

Our children will learn to stand for the Lord based on the example they see us lead.  I'm sure to those around Noah, the building of an ark which took about one hundred years (another vague type of number, but by doing the math laid out in chapters 5-7 of Genesis, 100-120 years is what most people have come up with) did not make sense, but rather than give into any peer pressure he may have experienced, he continued building the ark until it was completed.  Had he not followed through with the plan that God set before him, not only would he have been affected but his whole family would have also. 

Watch how we teach the account. Okay, this is the part that really got to me.  As a teacher in a Christian school, I taught the account of Noah every year.  As I would retell the Biblical accounts, I always acted out each character to help the Bible come alive to my students.  I would give the characters different voices and would often ask the children to imagine how the character was feeling. 

In this account though, I always added in the part that Noah was being ridiculed and made fun of for building the ark. I had heard preachers, evangelists, and other Christian teachers say that this laughing crowd was there, and it just made sense to me that they would be there since they were an unbelieveing generation and because they were so wicked before the Lord.  However, no matter how many Noah related verses throughout the Bible that I looked up, I could not find one that said that he was ridiculed or laughed at while building the boat.  God's Word does not point them out.  Even Addie's picture Bible shows people in the background laughing at Noah.  This really bothered me as I began to study this passage.  All of these years, I unknowingly taught my students something that I now could not find.  

Now as I teach the account to Addie (she calls Noah No-day), I have to be sure that I give her the facts as they are written in the Bible. (If anyone can find a passage which puts the ridiculing crowd at the scene of the ark, please tell the verse! Until then, I am not adding them in.) With any Biblical account, we need to be sure to read the account from God's Word to be sure that we give an accurate retelling to our children. 

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