Noah and the Art of Becoming (Genesis 9:20)

Meditations on Genesis #24

Genesis 9:20

Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard.

On January 1st, my family sat down at our breakfast table and each of us came up with a word for the year ahead as a sort of resolution. My five-year-old daughter, Skye, said “creative”; my nine-year-old son, Micah, said “endurance”; my wife, Megan, said “simplicity”; and I said, “Industrious.”

For a bit of context, when Covid hit back in 2020, I was in the process of painting illustrations for what would’ve been my eighth children’s book—a devotional book called Monuments of Grace—as a follow-up to the devotional book that I’d published on my 33rd birthday in honor of Christ’s Life called Marvel at the Mystery. I was also set to continue my M.A. in English degree that summer at Middlebury College in Vermont, but something odd transpired. Not only did Covid derail my English degree, but I suddenly lost all motivation to continue painting. It wasn’t that I intentionally quit though. What happened is that my wife had spent a year begging me to help her put up some white shiplap boards on our living room wall, while I conveniently found excuses to shrug it off—for one, I’d never worked with a nail gun and felt a little afraid, plus, I’d hardly done any basic carpentry and the whole thing felt like a chore, and, more importantly, I didn’t think that our bland, off-white walls needed a makeover. But Megan was patient, and by the grace of God I eventually relented. Well, it’s difficult to put into words what happened next. All I remember is that I walked out into my cluttered garage, grabbed a handsaw in one hand and a white shiplap board in another, and as soon as the blade met the board I was hooked. Something about the smell of the sawdust and the squeal of the metal and the throbbing in my triceps transported me into a place of stillness before the LORD. Even sanding the boards, which many carpenters loathe, was akin to the joy of singing a good old hymn at the end of a church service. There was gospel truth in it, too; because when I looked hard enough at the knots and lines and contours of each unique piece of wood—which are just the callouses of their own earthly toil—the thought struck me that these dead strips of wood were once living things. Yet, even in death they continue to beautify my family’s life. They take on a second life as it were, as we carpenters transfigure their scars into works of art.

Well, to work with wood is to fall in love with trees, and the world was still in lockdown mode, so I decided it was time to get busy planting as well. I bought a River Birch, an Autumn Maple Blaze, and a Crabapple tree, and planted them in my back yard. The country singers are right: there really is something special about buying dirt and making something of it. There’s something divine in it. “The Sower knelt down on His knees; dug through the earth with calloused hands to till the soil,” I wrote on my album Kingdom Rising. But I really couldn’t have written that line until I’d knelt down as a sower myself. The day I got down on my knees to dig a hole wide enough for a root ball, and tilled the dirt with my hands to remove stones and debris, and gently loosened tangled roots to let them breathe, and massaged the cold soil around the newly planted tree, and tamped down the earth with my hands and feet to provide stability, and watered the sapling for the first time, is the day I began to better understand that Grace really is in the crevices of our common lives. And that’s why the word ‘industrious’ is now on my heart more than ever before. That’s also why I started this Substack last month, despite all the internal objections. Because I still have so much more to learn about Almighty God, not so much the bookish kind of knowledge, but the experiential kind: the kind that comes from sowing new seeds and building new bridges and planting new vineyards and parenting new children and coaching new teams and all the other sacramental expressions of human endeavor.

Friend, do you ever feel like you’re too old to learn a trade? Doesn’t the enemy ever whisper in your ear that it’s too late to change course? “Give up!”, he sneers. “You aren’t qualified for this work—you’ll never be an expert anyway, so what’s the point? Who cares if you can change your own car oil or fix your leaking sink or start a fishing club at church or lead a teatime for young women? What difference does it make?” Questions like these nip at my heels like old dogs keeping me from new tricks, and that’s why Noah’s resiliency here in Genesis 9:20 is so uplifting. Noah has just watched his whole world wash away—his career, his livelihood, his collection, his shop full of tools—yet, despite the loss, he steps out of the ark with fresh vigor. Maybe he’s been working in a woodshop his entire life, building houses and boats and farming carts, etc., but now there’s a brand new world in front of him, a frightening world for that matter, with no one but his own family to build for, and the thought must strike him in the gaping expanse of the unknown, “If the world is now new, I must become new, too.” The ark was a mighty achievement, no question; but Noah can’t take it with him down the mountain. It’s no use to him anymore, not as a boat at least. The flood was yesterday’s travail; today is a new frontier.

Friend, maybe you painted yesterday, but you’ll dig tomorrow. Maybe you started a blog last year, but you’ll start a church next year. Maybe you led a worship team for the past decade, but you’ll serve in a special needs classroom for the next. Whatever the case, I encourage you to grab that saw or that sander or that shovel or that teapot and ask the LORD to inspire your hands for a new work. Make the prayer of your spirit, “LORD, help me do more;” not, “LORD, I’ve had enough.”

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*Micah just took this photograph of me holding little Mariah while she tries to pull off the candles on our Loblolly Pine Tree. It was all fun and games till she eventually got her greedy mitts on the branches and tried to pull the whole tree down! But what a great picture of new growth. My precious baby is almost ten months’ old now, and seeing her joy at witnessing new things every day in her surrounding environment—even if she crudely tries to stuff them in her mouth—is how I want to approach the beautiful life God has given me. “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”, said our LORD through the prophet Isaiah. Oh, but let’s do more than merely perceive that fresh work of grace today, friend. Let’s participate in it! Let’s roll up our sleeves in imitation of our ever-working Father and get busy breaking new ground.