Genesis 8-11
If you have ever spent time in an airport terminal, you know how truly small the world can be. Travelers from all walks of life, zoom around in every direction. Despite differences in cultures, status, and language, there is a common purpose among all: a deep desire to get somewhere. While that “somewhere” might be to make a business deal, take a vacation, visit family, or relocate, each of us move to add value and meaning to our lives, to move to be a part of something greater than ourselves.
In Genesis 9, the world is a small place in a much different way. Those who survived the flood all belong to Noah’s family, who moved with a single purpose, obedience to the Creator. God restored the connection in a covenant with all of creation. A rainbow in the clouds became a sign of His promise, a reminder of both His faithfulness to a world, to redeem, restore, and sustain life, but also a reminder of the single sustaining purpose of humanity, to serve the Almighty God. While God continues to uphold his side of the bargain, humanity once again falls into the trap of sin. Noah and his family, like Adam and Eve, and like each one of us, are tempted by the self-serving desires of value, meaning, and knowledge that leads them astray from God’s command.
In Genesis 11, we see a culmination of humanity’s desire becoming misplaced. At Babel, people attempted to build a tower that reached the heavens. It is not to honor a God who created the Earth and flooded it at His command, but to make a name for themselves because they had moved some earth. Was their longing for unity wrong? Absolutely not. God has given us an inmate desire to be connected, but the work of man without God, will never lead to Utopia. Repeated time and again in history is the danger of groupthink that allows for and even endorses the most despicable behavior. God’s response is to scatter these people and confuse their languages, reminding them that true unity and purpose can only be found in Him.
While the world still speaks some 7,000 languages, there is still a desire that binds each one of them. Jesus Christ has become the purification we receive in the flood and the desire for connection displayed in Babel. He is both the covenant that brings us back to God, and the one who unites us as brothers and sisters in Him. The single purpose sought in Babel is now realized in the Church, where people of every nation, tribe, and tongue are united. Like the airport, with a much greater sense of purpose and much less baggage, Jews, Greeks, slaves, free, men, women, impoverished and wealthy, and every other intersection of society are brought together.
Jesus Christ, and the purpose he brings to life, is the dearest desire of every nation. The hope he brings, no matter the direction we are moving or even the trespasses accumulated against him, is the groaning inside each one of us. More than any other other time since Babel, we have an opportunity, to connect with people, nations, and even languages far beyond our own. Whether it is to our neighbor or the ends of the earth, let us continue to move for a single purpose, seeking and building the Kingdom of God.
-Aaron Winner
Reflection Questions
- Do you sometimes get moving…but forget what your purpose is? What is your greatest purpose today – and this year? How will you work towards fulfilling it?
- What went wrong at Babel? Have you ever been a part of a venture that crashed for the same reason? How do we proceed more carefully in the future?
- How might the stories of the flood and the tower of Babel have been different if Jesus had already been born, grown, baptized and was ministering at those respective times? How would your story be different if you had been born before Jesus?
- What do you desire that Jesus gives? What does your neighbor desire that Jesus has made available?
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