Adam,Noah, and that Lot

Last night I had one of my sleepless nights. My thoughts wandered all over the place.

A word  came unbidden to my mind.

 I hadn't heard it in years and it's one of my favorites.

"Pusillanimous"   The Merriam Webster dictionary defines it ;

" lacking in courage  and resolution, marked by contemptible timidity".

On the heels of it came another word; "antediluvian"

I really love that one. It means "before the flood " as in Noah and The  Ark.

I don't know a lot about the Old Testament. Catholic  faith   is  more or less  based on the Teachings of Christ.

There were the parables and  a few miracles thrown in  for a firm foundation and the Song of Solomon for wisdom.

We did touch on a few Old Testament stories like David and Goliath.  There was a while, I  used the story of Adam and Eve as a conversation starter.

There they were in the Garden of Eden with everything going for; them. All they could ever need or desire was provided. But the Lord put a tree there and a serpent and forbade them to eat the fruit. 

They did anyway. When The Lord came to find them where they were hiding, what did Adam say?

"The woman  made me do it.It was all her fault"

The Lord created the woman to be Adam's companion. He thought his male handiwork was pretty neat so he made a female as well.

What does the story tell us about Adam? He was nothing but a big useless hunk of clay after all and he should cover his nakedness.

The forbidden fruit got the pair of them thrown out of The Garden of Eden and we've been sinners ever since. Eve was punished more for her part in the debacle by the pain of childbirth.

Last night, my thoughts drifted on to Noah and The Ark; how The Lord told him to build it and take on board, a pair of each animal species because the Lord was going to send a flood to destroy the world; except for Noah and his family so the great experiment could start again afresh after forty days and forty nights.

The Lord must have been pretty aggravated.

Obviously The Lord was once again having serious doubts about his creation.

Another time was when The Lord told Lot to take his wife and leave Sodom and Gomorrah because The Lord was planning to hurl down some pretty serious fire and brimstone and destroy the lot once again.

He warned Lot and his wife not to look back or something terrible would happen.

Sure enough, as the story goes, Lot's wife couldn't contain her curiosity. She looked back and was turned into an instant pillar of salt.

Wouldn't you know? The woman again doing what she was told not to and suffering the ultimate penalty.

About then, it occurred to me, how many times The Lord had decided his human creation was so awful, there was only one solution and that was to wipe out the lot and start all over again.

Before I drifted off to sleep, I was thinking, if The Lord himself couldn't get it right the first time and numerous times after and he was all-powerful, what chance does a mere mortal have?

But he kept on trying.