The Door

"And those that entered, male and females of all flesh, went in as God commanded him. And the Lord shut him in." Genesis 7:16

It's really, really cool how God shut them into the ark.

Awesome.

God gave Noah this whole list of very specific instructions. But according to these instructions, where was the crank to pull the door shut?

It wasn't there.

What do you think would have happened if Noah built his own crank thing, instead of following God's plan completely?

While God shutting the door Himself is an awesome thought, there is a symbolic lesson in here too.

Sometime, God gives us plans that don't make complete sense. Now, we know He has a plan. We can see the plan. We can see where He is going with this plan. But it seems like He is missing a step. Like we need to help God out, and add the crank so to speak, because He forgot it. And we will never be able to fully carry out God's plan, until we add a crank, so we can shut the door, and the whole boat doesn't get swept away with all the evil of the world, right?

We see this "over-eager-to-help-fix-God's-plan," attitude many times in Scripture. Just one example is Saul deciding to keep some animals instead of killing them and offering the sacrifice before Samuel got there.

We need to remember that we don't need to try to fix God's plan.

Basically, we need to ignore that "practical" voice in our heads that says, "We need to do this, or how else will God's plan be fulfilled?"

God's plans were planned out a long time ago. So when He gives us a plan, we don't need to do anything except what He wants us to do to enact this plan.

If Noah had built a crank, he would not have been fully trusting God's plan to provide and make His plan perfect.
And if Noah had built a crank, we wouldn't have noticed how awesome it was that God shut the door Himself.

---Joy