Thursday, March 7

Genesis 9:8-17

My daughter had a beautiful snow globe I had bought her for her birthday that played “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” It was special to both of us. We even have a picture of me giving it to her when she turned 6 years old. One day her and her brother were having fun in her room and with a swipe of an arm, the snow globe was knocked down, shattered on the floor. Her tears were the kind of tears that make a mother’s whole body hurt. I cried alongside her as we picked up each piece of the glass. After we cleaned up the glass and soaked up the water, we looked at the snow globe as a new creation. It was now a unicorn that we could touch, not surrounded by water and glass but that still played “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

In Genesis, God grieves over the pain in the world. He feels the grief of a parent over the brokenness of the world. And then the snow globe shatters and God sends the flood. However, He doesn’t wipe away all of creation but He wipes creation clean. He re-creates it. It is an act of God seeking us and wanting us to come back to the perfection He created for us.

Then He doesn’t have to play “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” but instead hangs a rainbow in the sky to promise us that He seeks to re-create us and draw us into harmony. God still seeks for you to know you are a new creation that He has wiped clean. He calls us to live into this freedom, to pick up the broken pieces, and to see ourselves as His new creation and sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

• Do you see yourself as a new creation in Jesus?

• What areas of your life do you carry shame that you need to let Him wipe clean?

Pastor Tabitha Martin