Noah Builds The Ark
Genesis 6-9
After Adam and Eve had left the garden, many people were born. Sadly, most of the people forgot about God and made very bad choices. This made God so sad and filled his heart with pain. He wanted to stop this and make the world a better place.
Noah loved God. God told Noah about his plan to start over. God told him, “Noah, build an ark and pack it with enough food for you and your family, and for the male and female animals I will send your way. Noah listened and obeyed God, and he and his family began building the ark.
Animals started coming in pairs: lions and lambs, butterflies and horses, bluebirds and bears, foxes and elephants, alligators and giraffes, and many more. Once all of Noah’s family and the animals were safe inside the ark the rain began to fall. First just a little. Then big raindrops pounded the earth, then hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, trillions! There was so much water that the ground started to flood. Noah’s ark, which carried Noah, his family and a pair of every kind of animal in the world, started to float. The ark rocked back and forth on the rising water.
Before long, the whole earth was covered with water. God’s flood destroyed the bad things and washed them all away. Everyone and everything inside the ark were safe because Noah listened and obeyed God.
After forty days and forty nights, the rain stopped, and the sun came out. Slowly the water went down. Noah sent out a dove to look around. It had no place to land, so it came back to the ark. Noah waited a few days and then sent it out again; it returned with a fresh olive leaf in its beak. The flood was over! The ark came to rest on top of a tall mountain. The trees started to grow again! Then God said to Noah, “Come out of the ark, you and your family. Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you: the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground.”
To celebrate the world’s new beginning, God hung a rainbow in the sky. “I will never again use a flood to destroy the earth,” God said. “This rainbow is My promise to all of My people.”
God knew that people would make bad choices again, and they would not listen and obey him. But He already had another plan. One day, He would send His Son, Jesus, to save his children from evil. You can make good choices by always listening and obeying God.
