Again, God is specific with timing. The ark came to rest on the 17th day of the 7th month. In the 601st year (of Noah’s life), 2nd month, 27th day of the month, the earth was finally dry again. Noah and his family had been in the ark for about a year. I can only imagine the smell.

God knows the timing of every single thing in your life. If you are wondering when, or how long, then I invite you to rest. Stop wrestling with the timing of it. Whatever it is, it will not be one minute late, or go on one minute too long.

Noah and his family didn’t know how long they would be in there. I assume they had friends and neighbors who perished in the flood. Their home and all that was known to them was gone, and they had no idea what life would look like outside of the Ark. Maybe they were grieving. Maybe they were scared. Whatever they were dealing with, it was no vacation.

Sometimes being rescued is hard. Life as we know it changes and it can be painful, and it always comes with a loss. In fact, we all have, or have heard, testimonies of life going downhill fast once we surrendered our lives to Jesus. If you are in the hard part of the rescue, stay put. Dry ground is coming.

“Then Noah built an altar to the Lord.”

Altars. Places of sacrifice. Worship. Devotion. Repentance. Thanksgiving. They represent our lives before God. The sacrifice on Noah’s altar was a costly one, given that there were only so many animals left on the earth. And that thought quickly became this one –

There are things that come with us in our rescue so that they can become our sacrifice on dry ground.

So, here come the questions, more for me than for you, but I think we could all stand to answer them: What came with you when Jesus declared you saved? Have you built an altar for your pride yet (independence, selfishness, anger, etc.)?

Can you look back at the difficult seasons and find the altars you built to worship God?

Is your life on an altar right now?