Satirically Yours # 9: Noah's Diary

Things assuredly had gone from bad to worse. The Lord was exceedingly grieved with mankind, whose thoughts were only evil all the time. One would be hard pressed to imagine a more scathing indictment.

He, moreover, instructed me to build an ark for the saving of my family, and select breeding animals. It goes without saying that persons were quite curious. "What are you doing?" my neighbor inquired of me. Not once but on repeated occasions, as if unconvinced by my previous explanation.

Not uncommonly persons mocked my efforts. "Make certain that you get enough pitch," they would caution in jest, "lest you spring a leak and perish like the rest of us." "Poor old Noah," they would reflect among themselves. "He has flipped his lid."

On more than one occasion, they organized a protest rally. They came prepared with signs reading: "Live one day at a time," "Don’t trouble trouble until trouble troubles you," "Diversity is the spice of life," "What is wrong for one person is right for another," and "If it feels good, do it." Meanwhile, they refused to mend their ways.

In the six hundredth year of my life, and the seventeenth day of the second month all the springs of the deep burst forth, and the floodgates of heaven were opened. Whereupon, rain fell on the earth for forty days and nights. As the water rose, the ark floated on the surface. The giraffe was the last to keep its head above water.

At long last, the water receded. "You reek from the stench of animals," my wife informed me. "You are not coming near me until you thoroughly wash yourself." She was adamant.

"First things first," I replied. Consequently, I built an altar to the Lord, and sacrificed on it. He was pleased with my devotion, and ruminated: "Never again will I destroy all living creatures. As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease."

"This is the sign of the covenant," he added: "I have set the rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth." As it is well known, the rainbow resembles a bow held over-head—as an enduring sign of peace.

Now that I have gotten older, memory seems to be increasingly a problem. Just the other day I stopped short, and inquired of my wife: "Was I coming or going?"

She confidently replied, "You were going."

"Good," I acknowledged, "then I have already eaten lunch."

Our family continues to multiply. Along with our children, we have grandchildren, and now even great-grandchildren. I am of the opinion that my wife spoils them rotten. She, in turn, insists that it is the privilege of grandparents to do so. Fortunately, they also have parents, who provide better discipline.

"Where does that leave us?" mused an addendum. "Only the rainbow remains, as a lingering testimony of God’s compassionate provision. As set over against human folly, which supposes we can manage for ourselves. In consequence of the tragic results, when nothing else works, read the instructions."