By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.
Hebrews 11:7 (NIV)
The Boat and the Vineyard
After the water goes down, Noah plants a vineyard. He drinks the wine it makes and lies uncovered inside his tent, and two of his sons come in backward with a garment stretched between their shoulders so they won’t have to see their father.
By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.
Noah built the boat. He worked on a word, with nothing he could point to the whole time the work went on. The righteousness came to him the way anything comes to an heir, in keeping with faith.
Curtis puts a folding table up in his garage most Saturdays once the heat breaks, with the door rolled up, five or six people around it, and whatever his sister carried over going cold in a foil pan in the middle while everybody talks over the top of it. The door stays up until dark.
Curtis was drinking one spring and put a forklift through a rack of steel. He’ll give you that night down to the sound it made, and he lets it stand for everything else, the years of doing what he said he would do included.
You can hold one night in that kind of detail and remember almost nothing about the years of doing what you said you would do. Noah is named for his faith, and he is called an heir of righteousness. The vineyard is in Genesis. Both of those are about the same man.
At some point next Saturday, with the pan going around again, Curtis will tell it. What would he have to hear, and who would have to say it, before he let the rest of it speak for him?
A Prayer to Remember
Lord, I’d have taken a sign, something in the sky I could point at. There isn’t one, and there’s a thing I said I’d do today that I’ll have to do on your word alone. Let me do it. If you asked me about myself I would bring up one night, and you know the rest of it.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
