Opening the Window.
The flood kept coming, the words on the page tell us.
I have difficulty keeping track of the numbers.
Verse 12 says the water fell for forty days and forty nights.
Twelve verses later were told the water flooded the earth for a hundred
and fifty days.
The flood kept coming.
Which is what floods often do.
They keep coming until your ark is
Lifted high above the earth.
The rain stops falling and the water recedes.
Somehow a piece of rock, high up, catches the boat and holds it fast.
When the tops of the mountains can be seen
The old man opens a window and sends out a raven.
We open windows and send out birds,
don't we,
when we wonder what is ahead
and whether dry ground is to be found?
We open windows and send out words
like ravens and doves,
Whose wings beat against the air
Words looking down for an olive tree, green and growing.
The old man waits at his open window
For the birds to return with some evidence
That God has remembered
And the floodgates of heaven have been closed.
So we look out, looking for what we cannot see,
Wondering what is beyond the here and now,
The known flood,
Sending out words like doves to find a starting place.
