Zapping everything evil

When the LORD saw how wicked everyone on earth was and how evil their thoughts were all the time, he was sorry that he had ever made them and put them on the earth. He was so filled with regret that he said, ‘I will wipe out these people I have created, and also the animals and birds, because I am sorry that I made any of them’.   (verses 5-8)

Read Genesis 6:5-22

People say things like, ‘Why doesn’t God just zap everything that IS evil and let good people get on with living as he wants them to?’

I, for one, pray that God never does! According to the description of people quoted above, I would be one of the first to go: ‘The LORD saw how wicked everyone on earth was and how evil their thoughts were all the time’. There I find what is so often a description of me.

God made an exception of Noah. Was it because he was never evil, never had wicked thoughts? Not if the passages after the Flood are to be taken seriously. But Noah ‘lived in fellowship with God’ (verse 10). So he and his family were not destroyed when everyone else was.

That is how God still treats his people. Because of what Jesus did for us, we too can live in fellowship with God again. Because of that he allows us to live, not just for now but eternally.

So our cry ought not be for zapping. Rather, it ought to be a cry of gratitude for the forgiveness we have for when we still let God down, and a cry of encouragement to each other to urge those around us to learn how they too can ‘live in fellowship with God’

I thank you, Father, that you do not treat me as I so often deserve, but that, instead, you see me in Jesus. Amen.

by Robert Turnbull, in ‘God’s Promises for each Day’ (LCA, Openbook, 1999)

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