The ark

We've had a fun week in school. Looking at creation and the flood, we've also been exploring the composition of the earth...which in turn leads to getting to talk and read about volcanoes, one of Bud's favorite topics!

We've also enjoyed reading different children's books about the flood, especially (for me) with an eye to the choices of illustrators. One of the ones we read was Peter Spier's "Noah's Ark." It begins with the line "Noah found grace in the eyes of God" on the front leaf and closes with "and he planted a vineyard." At the beginning there is a translated poem about the flood--all on one page. Everything in between is progressive illustrations with no text (Spier won the Caldecott for this in 1978).

One double-page spread rocked me back a bit as we read...the water slowly rises outside of the ark, while all of the animals who are outside look on. Eventually there is just the ark on water (not surprisingly, this image is available at the amazon link above). How had I never before considered what that was like? As a friend of mine put it later, she had "thrown out all of the cheery Noah's Ark kids books. That is such a hard story."


Well. Perhaps half an hour later, Bud called me back to the couch with tears in his eyes. The book was opened again to that very page. "Mom, I'm just so sad for all of the animals who didn't make it on the ark." I held him as he cried. He then went into a fast-talking plan-making mode, explaining how if he was Noah, he would have built it bigger so that all of the animals could fit. He would have gotten more people to help him build it. "That's good thinking, Bud. But what about this? God told Noah exactly how big to build the boat. Also, all of those other people didn't love God and wouldn't have obeyed about building the ark, anyway. Remember?"

Following this was the reminder that the wicked people died in the flood, too, not just the animals...which was very sad. And where Bud (making the cognitive leap that is so much harder for grown-ups, I think) wide-eyed asked, "Are we on the ark, Mama? Are we?" "Yes, Bud. Jesus is our ark. Having faith in Jesus and loving Him is like walking right onto the ark."

Our Bud has been asking a lot of the big questions ever since the fire. What a delight and privilege to have the time to walk through these things together!