I received an e-mail this morning from a friend saying that the Today Show was broadcasting a dispatch from Fort Dodge, Iowa -- only 16 miles away from my hometown of Manson -- because of flooding in the area. I look online and the story is that Manson is even more the center of the flooding than Fort Dodge. This was the first I heard of it, so immediately I called my mom.
Our land is on a rise, so for us to get flooded out would require something Biblical. * Still, apparently we have water in our basement, which we've had recurrently since moving into the house 27 years ago. Worse, says my Mom, something with all the rain has caused the switch for our well to break, so my parents have no running water. They are catching rain in barrels to use as their non-drinking water. Plus the septic tank is full and so the toilets won't flush. I didn't ask for details on how they are handling that.
I have a photography-inclined reader from Manson--if you read this, you know who you are--so maybe I'll get some photos of the flooding. The golf course is always an especially compelling flood zone.
* Or, more properly, anti-Biblical, given the whole rainbow thing. I remember my Sunday School learnin'! (Although, wait, is the thing with the rainbow symbolizing God's promise not to flood the world again actually in the Bible, or is it part of the non-scriptural overlay given to various Old Testamant episodes?)
6 comments:
Sorry to learn that your folks are having a time of it.
(Bible: Whatever you learned as a boy, ALL the world isn't flooded yet. You aren't blogging from an ark in Cambridge or wherever, are you?)
is it a playmobil ark?
From Genesis 9 (NIV):
8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: 9 "I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you 10 and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. 11 I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth."
12 And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: 13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. 16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth."
17 So God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth."
Pretty explicit, I'd say.
You know what has always struck me as weird about that passage? That God would need to set up a mechanism to REMIND HIMSELF that he wasn't going to kill all living things (or almost all) with a flood. I mean, isn't the dude omniscient? Why does he need a rainbow as his own version of a post-it note? To requote:
Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind.
Weird, eh?
Also weird, I'm teaching the Bible this year. THAT has me worried. I'm not sure if it's one of the signs of the apocalypse, but it should be.
Oh, how small our brains are.
'Pretty explicit, I'd say'. THERE'S the answer for a replacement phrase: Instead of 'suggests' 'indicates' et al -- just state your research and put THAT down. Who will not agree with you?
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