Noah’s Ark

They came two by two, and seven by seven. No one led them, but they came anyway. Strike that. They were led by God’s invisible hand. Something like that anyway. The animals came in evens if they were unclean, and odds if they were clean. Whatever that means. Okay, I’m starting to lose the thread, but the end result is still undeniable. The Ark was the world’s first zoo, and Noah was its first zookeeper.

Perhaps I need to brush up on my Bible knowledge. I used to know it all cold. I could separate my Methuselahs from my Melchizedeks in the blink of an eye, and still have something left over for a study of Samuel vs. Joseph. Growing up as a preacher’s kid in a highly religious household did that to me, made me some kind of a Bible freak, and while I didn’t like it, it was still somehow something I took pride in. Hmmm. I heard it too.

Anyway, today my family went to an amusement park that used to have an attraction called “Noah’s Ark.” They took it down in 1989 and scattered the animals that used to belong to it around the park in other destinations, leaving a plaque behind with a picture of the former attraction and some words to the effect that it was taken down in 1989 and its animals scattered around the park.

Lexi asked me what Noah’s Ark was all about, and I’m usually the one to ask. At least I used to be. But I couldn’t even recall if the two by two were clean animals, what “clean” even meant, and how many people were on the Ark. I knew it was all Noah’s family, and everyone else who was on earth at the time drowned in the flood. I knew it was something about faith, and the faithless, and a cleansing. It’s always about a cleansing.

And a lot of rain. That’s where it began, and ended, as a matter of fact, with a lot of rain. Which is pretty much all that I think Lexi heard of my rambling story of faith, the faithless, and cleansing. Just a lot of rain. Which is okay. Because it also rained today. It’s called a frame of reference. Kids are good at that.

Sam