A Pleasing Aroma

 DEVOTION

GENESIS

 A PLEASING AROMA

Gen 8:20-22

20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21 The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. 22 "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease."

NIV

The last years of Noah had not been the greatest in one respect, and the greatest in another respect. Although God informed Noah of what would happen, he spent a hundred of years at hard labor building, perfecting the largest structure ever done by man. In Addition, he built a boat where there was nowhere in the sight of water and most likely had to endure ridicule by the people whose inclination of their hearts was evil all the time, from childhood, we are now told. Then Noah had to spend all those months closed up in the ark, with all the animals that he and his family most of spent much of their days making sure each animal was fed the right food, which Noah and his family had to gather and put in stores as God commanded. When the rain came and the springs of the deep opened up, and the ark began to float, Noah and his family were now to endure forty days and nights of extreme weather conditions they had never experienced before, with raging waters that must have tossed the ark around. After all that the ark landed on dry ground, God told Noah it was time to get out of the ark, release all the animals, and get on with life. What is the first thing Noah does? He builds an altar to the LORD. Noah praises the LORD; Noah gives thanks to the LORD, with an offering of thanksgiving, a sweet amora of praise that pleased the LORD. Although Noah sacrificed clean animals and birds in praise to the LORD, we have been told to offer ourselves as a sweet amora of praise, a living sacrifice that is pleasing to the LORD. Of course, we have not endured all that Noah did, but we can say that we have had various times when our bodies have not been so kind to us. We have endured pain in our bodies, and pain in our hearts when our family members may go through the valley of death. We may have gone through various hardships in life, but we still have built altars of thanksgiving and praise in our hearts to the LORD. We continue to offer ourselves as a sweet amora of praise to the Father for his great salvation through Jesus on that cross, just as Noah must have felt about his salvation because of the ark God commanded him to build. Let us always be at that altar of praise and thanksgiving to our Lord and Savior and to God the Father and for the Spirit who dwells in us guiding us into all truth. Let us be a pleasing aroma to God.