but God...

Genesis 8


 ¹ But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. ² Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. ³ The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, ⁴ and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. ⁵ The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.

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Some of the most powerful sentences begin with the phrase 'but God'.

Here, in spite of the the devastating flood, God remembers.

But God remembered.

It seems that this is no passing thought, no casual memory but a calling into action.  The remembering took place in the wind that was sent over the earth.

Does this wind over the earth echo back to that wind/breath/Spirit that hovered over the formlessness of creation?

God uses the wind to drive back the waters, and stops the rain falling and the 'springs of the deep' rising.  

The deep...that deep that the Spirit hovered over in Genesis 1 has now been closed.  

The power and force of those waters was vast.

But God remembered.


And the ark came to rest.

*** 

Personal reflection  


In the chaos and drivenness of life, in the floods of hopelessness and despair, in the mountain covering extent of the deep and the dangerous, the words 'but God...' are speech-defyingly wonderful.