Noah's Ark

A long time after God had created the world

and made man and all the animals and birds,

he noticed that people were no longer kind to each other

and that they didn't obey God anymore.

So he was angry.

But God did see one man in the world who was kind and good

and who obeyed the Lord's word.

This man was Noah.

So God appeared to Noah and he let him hear his voice.

And the Lord said, "Behold. I will cause it to rain upon the earth 40 days and 40 nights.

I will bring a flood to the earth to destroy all flesh

and everything that is in the earth shall die."

But God told Noah to build an ark

and to take two of every animal in it with him

to keep alive during the storm.

And when Noah had heard God's voice, he was grateful,

and he set to work right away to build the ark.

This was a great boat with many, many rooms in it.

When Noah finally finished it,

he went out into the fields and woods,

for he had to talk to all kinds of animals and birds.

He talked to the lions,

and the wild horses.

He talked to the pigs in the barnyard,

and the elephants in the jungle,

and the cute little kittens in his own house.

Noah talked to all the animals on the face of the earth,

even to the doves, cooing in their nests.

And Noah picked a mother and a father of each kind of animal and bird

and he told them to come to the ark.

Well, when they were all gathered there,

you can imagine what kind of a noisy crowd

poor Noah had on his hands.

What with lions roaring,

and pigs squealing,

and monkeys chattering,

and hyenas laughing.

Well it must have been nosier than a crowd of children

on the annual Sunday school excursion.

But Noah was wise and gentle and he understood about animals.

So he got them lined up in a long row, two by two.

and then he started them up and into the ark through the big door in the side.

The bees were the last to go in because bees have a stinger in their tails

and no animal wanted to get into line behind them.

Noah stored food in the boat and then saw

that his wife and his sons and their wives were safely inside.

Then he shut the big door behind him and he bolted it.

Then, there was a flash of lightning

and the thunder roared as it never had before.

Big black clouds hid the sun so that it was almost as dark as night.

And out of those clouds came the greatest rain the world has ever known.

It lasted for 40 days and 40 nights, as God had promised Noah.

All the land was covered with water

and not a house or a living thing remained anywhere.

But Noah's ark floated on the surface

of the waters and he and his family

and the animals who were in the ark with them, were saved.

On the 40th day, the rain stopped and the sun came out.

The waters that had covered the earth began

to flow back into the oceans and the rivers,

and the ark came to rest on the peak of a mountain.

But Noah wasn't quite sure that there

was enough dry land for all his animals to live on.

So he took one of the doves and let it fly out of the window.

In a little while, it came back and in its beak,

the dove carried the branch of an olive tree.

Noah knew that this must be sign from God

that he had restored quiet and peace to the world.

So, he opened the door of the ark and he

and his family and all the animals

came out on the dry land, and they praised God and thanked him.

Then the Lord appeared again to Noah.

He promised him that he would never again

send a flood to destroy the earth.

And he sealed that promise with a beautiful symbol,

which he set in the sky for all of us to see.

That symbol, the token of God's everlasting faith in man,

is the rainbow.