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Noah’s olive leaf reminds us that the world’s floodwaters do eventually subside
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When the dove returned to Noah in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. That little olive sprig was far more than foliage. It represented hope. It was proof to Noah that God was working and that His purposes would come to pass.
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What are the floodwaters surrounding you today? Loneliness? Depression? A limping marriage? Wayward children? Maybe you stare at your bleak horizon and feel like you are destined to float forever in an endless sea of medical, financial, or occupational trouble. Ask God for an olive leaf. It likely won’t be an immediate solution to your situation. However, it will bring immediate encouragement.
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Olive leaves can come in all sizes and forms:
timely phone calls from friends, reassuring Bible promises, encouraging news,
unexpected shifts in circumstances. And telling others about how you received
an olive leaf often serves as an olive leaf for them!
Max
Lucado
Noah was awakened not by crowing roosters,
but by the squawking of those pesky peacocks.
He fed the foul fowl, if for no other
reason than to shut them up.
Then he spent a good 20 minutes shoveling out
the elephant and rhino stalls.
Lord knows if it weren’t for the vast flood
outside the ark, he’d never be able to tolerate the vile smell inside.
He stared out one of the ark’s windows.
Same view as the day before — water in every direction, all the way to the
horizon.
After the 40-day flood, he and his family
had been floating for months in their maritime zoo.
They’d battled claustrophobia, seasickness,
and stir-craziness.
Suddenly, the giant
boat scraped to a stop. Noah thought to himself, “Solid ground? The waters must be receding!”
Noah waited a few days and then released a
dove, but “the dove could find nowhere to
perch” (Genesis
8:9)
and returned.
A week later, he
tried again. “When the dove returned to
him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then
Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth” (Genesis 8:11).
That little olive sprig was far more than
foliage. It represented hope.
It was proof to Noah that God was working
and that His purposes would come to pass.
Noah’s olive leaf reminds us that the
world’s floodwaters do eventually subside.
What are the floodwaters surrounding you
today?
Loneliness?
Depression?
A limping marriage?
Wayward children?
Maybe you stare at your bleak horizon and
feel like you are destined to float forever in an endless sea of medical,
financial, or occupational trouble.
Ask God for an olive leaf.
It likely won’t be an immediate solution to
your situation — it wasn’t for Noah; he still had plenty of days ahead on the
ark (see
Genesis 8:12–14).
Olive leaves can come in all sizes and
forms: timely phone calls from friends, reassuring Bible promises, encouraging
news, unexpected shifts in circumstances.
And telling others about how you received an olive leaf often serves as an olive leaf for them!
Devotional
from The Lucado Encouraging Word Bible, NIV Edition.
The Lucado Encouraging Word Bible, NIV Edition offers encouragement in God’s Word with a masterful collection of Max Lucado’s encouraging words curated from his more than forty years of sermons, books, and articles interspersed in Scripture. Learn More >
Some Bible translations focus
on the way Scripture was written—the form, grammar, even the word order of
the original. The difficulty is that no two languages follow the same set of
rules. That’s why translating Scripture is more than a matter of replacing
Greek or Hebrew words with English equivalents.
Other Bible translations focus
on the meaning of Scripture, helping you grasp the message of the
Bible in your own words. The challenge with this approach is that if you stray
too far from the form of the text, you might miss some of the subtle
nuances—literary devices, wordplays, etc.—found in the original.
Even the best literal
translation can’t follow the original form all the time. And even the best
meaning-based translation can’t capture every detail of meaning found in the
original.
In 1978, the NIV pioneered a
different approach: balancing transparency to the original with clarity of
meaning. Our view is that if the first people to receive the Bible could
understand God’s Word the way it was written, you should be able to as well.
https://www.thenivbible.com/blog/floodwaters-ask-god-for-olive-leaf/
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Fill My Cup, Lord
Richard Blanchard
CLICK HERE . . . to view complete playlist . .
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https://puricarechronicles.blogspot.com/2018/08/fill-my-cup-lord-richard-blanchard.html
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