Noah, and the bow in the cloud

Violence fills the earth, and God grieves. That is the word Genesis uses — not rage but grief, the pain of a maker watching his work turn on itself. The flood is judgement, and the Bible does not soften it. But the same chapter that announces it introduces one man who walks with God, and an enormous, slow, ridiculous-looking act of obedience: a boat built on dry land, for years, in front of neighbours. When the waters go down, Noah steps out into a scrubbed world, builds an altar, and God makes the first covenant in Scripture — a promise binding only on himself, with a sign hung in the sky where everyone can see it. A war bow, pointed away from the earth. Never again.