The Noah and flood story are great stories for children, but they are also great stories for us because they are true. Yet, the story also makes for one of the reasons Christianity isn't believed. A flood of this proportions just seems, well, too supernatural. It's for this same reason that many Christians are set on proving it happened. Yet both of these positions are wanting certitude while the Bible is inviting faith.

Noah and the flood. 3 whole chapters of the first 9 chapters of the Bible. What we've been seeing is that these first chapters of Genesis are laying foundations for how we understand God, others, the world about us and our place in it all. But three chapters about a Christian truth that people find offensive - God as judge. Yet, at the beginning of this story we have three key ideas that we have to keep in mind: 1. Sin is worse than we think, (2) God is the only truly just judge and (3) Grace is on the table.

Genealogies, "accounts", are the chapter headings of Genesis. Even so, their significance can be lost on us. Genesis 5 tells the Genealogy from Adam to Noah in the line of Seth. While it stands as incredibly different then genealogies we would tell (boy they were old!!), it is packed with meaning and encouragement to find life in the offspring to come and in calling on the name of the Lord. It stands in stark contrast to the genealogy of Cain in chapter 4. Pitted against each other, we are to find our life and our hope in the family of the Lord and our hope in him.