Week 1 Day 7: Babbling Away

Genesis 11

I had to laugh tonight when my husband asked me to go check out the trashcan in the kids' bathroom. I should have taken a picture (and would if it were not all the way across the house). The trash can runneth over. Joshua has a cold and he is going through tissues about as quickly as his nose runs. The whole point to this is my husband likened it to a "Tower of Babel" which was ironic considering Genesis 11 is about...

The Tower of Babel.

Here are these people. They all speak the same language. Can you imagine what that would be like? What if we all spoke the same language? Would there be fewer disagreements or would our words escalate the arguments even more? Totally rhetorical. I don't know the answer to that.

Anyway, one day these people get a big idea. Not a great idea. Just a big one. They decided they would just build a tower all the way up to heaven. After all, there would be power in that, right? That is what the people thought. However, nobody asked God.

So God looks at His people. I wonder if he did what I often do in similar situations. You know, the shaking of the head in frustration. The loud sighs. The roll of the eyes.

I love that this passage doesn't say He laid on a guilt trip trying to reason with these humans. It doesn't say that he exploded in anger. It just said that God announced that they would be scattering those people and multiplying their languages. And that is what he did.

Problem solved.

End of story.

I don't know exactly how He did it. I just know He did. No more one language. Now, just lots of babbling going on.

And because of that, we still have moments of frustration when we are trying to to talk to someone and our message gets lost in translation.

Or we call a company on the phone and we cannot understand a word they say due to thick accents.

Or we call customer service and hear, "Please press 1 for English..."

Or we open up a set of instructions and see the directions in six different languages.

All of that because of some people who wanted to be as big (if not bigger) than God.

Lord, help me to remember to be humble. Anything and everything I do should glorify you.

Amen.

Tomorrow's reading: Genesis 12