Why An Ark?

Many cultures through out human history have told a similar story of a great flood that covers the sphere, extinguishing all life save one vessel with its human and animal passengers.  The water recedes, and the inhabitants of the “ark” emerge to repopulate the Earth. As we “enter a new millennium,” the story of the ark holds a special metaphor for human kind, and we should seek to capture a new message from this ancient story as look out towards the next thousand years.

Think for a moment how the human
passengers, in the Bible- Noah and his family,  must have felt as they stepped off that vessel for the first time.  They would have viewed Earth with such a sense of awe, respect and preciousness.  Earth would be new again to them – and what thankfulness they would have felt for the opportunity to live – both at all and together.  The lesson we today can learn is that our planet itself is very much like the ark.  What other vessel could house and feed all the world’s species and travel great distances across an endless void?

If the Ark is the Earth itself, than we, all of us humans, share Noah’s mission.  We are called not only to be good caretakers of the ark, but we are also called to share Noah’s sense of awe and respect at the precious opportunity to live here on Earth – at all and together.  The Earth is an Ark and we are the Noah species. As the Noah species, we have a new opportunity to reshape the Earth, both physically and morally.
Our challenge as the Noah species is figure out how to truly view the Earth with awe and respect, and regard its inhabitants as truly precious.

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As we enter a new millennium the story of the ark holds a special metaphor for human kind.