During Lent, our confirmation students met with mentors to talk about faith and life—growing in identity, belonging, and purpose through caring relationships. Together they also co-wrote reflections on a Bible verse, and we’ll be sharing these devotionals throughout the Easter season as an invitation to embrace thoughtful dialogue and respond to God’s grace with love in the world.

Today's Reflection was written by 8th Grader Jacob Schopp and his mentor Scott Miller

This reflection is based on Genesis 6:13-22

Noah received a set of detailed instructions from God to build a boat bigger than Noah had ever seen in his life. Not to mention that Noah did not live in an area with any major bodies of water. This concept is so arbitrary to all of the things that he has been taught about how to work and live. All of the people around him thought he was crazy when he presented this idea to him. But he built it anyway.

With no idea of what it would look like and no concept of how this would be functional in a land like where he lived with little rain to cause the flood God promised. He had to build the ark over a time period equal to that of some people’s lifetimes.

Everybody has doubts about their faith sometimes and they can lead us to question our entire faith, yet Noah remained so steadfast in his faith that he got up everyday to work on a boat that was the equivalent of the size of a 5 story building the size of 1.5 football fields. That is 20 times more

than someone working on the pyramids would have built (considering all 8 people working on the ark did the same amount and an average pyramid worker, that ratio is in terms of estimated weight moved).



Now, we don’t have to feel pressured to work as hard and be as rock solid in our faith as Noah, but we can learn something from him and be inspired by him. He is a great example of who we can strive to be like as Christians.