Genesis 9: 12 – 13 And God said, “This is the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.”

In Genesis 1 we encountered God the Creator, he who needed no raw materials to make anything, the God who created order out of chaos. In Genesis 2 he manifested himself as the God who knew what was best for Adam and so provided for his needs, including companionship. In chapter 3 we saw that God’s desire was to have ongoing fellowship with the creatures he had created and that that fellowship was broken when Adam sinned. Since then God has pursued that desire relentlessly beginning with the sons of Adam and Eve – Cain and Abel, then his covenant with Noah, Abraham and his descendants, and even with us now as believers.

Generations after Adam, we are told that in an atmosphere of corruption and violence in the earth, Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord because he was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.” (See Genesis 6: 8 – 9). God revealed to Noah that he would bring judgment on the earth but desired to save him and his family. To this end God instructed him to build an ark of safety and to fill it with seven pairs of ‘clean’ animals and a pair of every other animal and birds of every species, together with enough food for all of them. Noah obeyed and once the door of the ark was closed, it rained for 40 days. Everyone and everything outside perished.

“But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth and the waters receded. Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky.” (Genesis 8: 1 – 2).  After the flood, God once again provided for man’s needs and set him on a fresh path but set boundaries for his conduct. He gave him responsibility for all creatures and accountability for the life of his fellowman. God sealed his part of the covenant with a rainbow in the clouds as a promise to never destroy the whole earth again by a flood.  (See Genesis 9: 1 – 17).

I am intrigued with the concept of a God who makes covenants with his creatures, knowing full well that we have a very short attention span and even smaller capacity for fulfilling his demands. Yet because of his love, he continually seeks to engage us with himself. This is called grace. Wherever did we get the idea that we are free to do as we please?