The Story
After one hundred and fifty days of floodwaters covering the earth, Scripture opens this passage with four of the most reassuring words in the entire Noah narrative — "But God remembered Noah." This was not a statement that God had forgotten Noah and suddenly recalled him — it was the Hebrew way of expressing that God was now actively turning His attention and care toward Noah and moving purposefully on his behalf after a long and difficult period of waiting. God caused a wind to blow across the waters and the underground springs and the floodgates of heaven were closed, and the waters began their slow but steady recession across the face of the earth. On the seventeenth day of the seventh month — exactly five months after the flood began — the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat, and Noah and his family felt the hull of the ark settle onto solid ground for the first time in months. Noah then patiently and methodically sent out birds to test whether the waters had receded enough to make the land habitable — first a raven which kept flying back and forth, and then a dove which initially found no place to land and returned, then a week later returned with a freshly plucked olive leaf in its beak — a small and beautiful sign of returning life that must have filled the ark with tremendous joy and relief. Noah waited yet another seven days before sending the dove out again, and this time it did not return — and when Noah finally removed the covering of the ark and looked out, he saw that the surface of the ground was drying out, and by the twenty-seventh day of the second month of Noah's six hundred and first year the earth was completely dry at last.
The Message
"God remembered Noah" is one of the great anchoring truths of Scripture — a reminder that no matter how long the storm lasts, how high the waters rise, or how silent heaven may seem during the waiting, God never loses sight of or abandons those who are sheltering in His care. The patient and methodical way that Noah waited on God's timing before leaving the ark — sending out the birds, observing the signs, and not rushing ahead of God's clear direction — is a beautiful model of the kind of trusting, unhurried obedience that honors God even when the hardest part of the trial appears to be over.