Babel

"Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3 They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babe —because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth." Genesis 11:1-9

This passage in the Bible proves to me that God has a sense of humor. Look at verse 7: "Come let us go down and confuse their languages..." Doesn't that just sound like a great time! Men who one second were having a conversation suddenly can't understand a word of what the other is saying- and they think in their new language too! I think that would have been terribly funny to witness. Not funny to experience, but funny to see.

This story of the tower of Babel says so much in just a few verses. "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them." That right there says it all. These verse tell me that we as people can do anything if we do it together. Working together is the key here in these verses. In two weeks our church is going to do a community service project. We're all getting together to stain a gazebo and park benches in one of our city's parks. It's a pretty sizable gazebo, and if one person were to try and do the work, it would likely take a good week to do it. Likewise, if a group of six people were doing it, but half wanted to use one color, and half wanted to use a different color, they wouldn't get very far, would they. The result would be a mess. Instead, we are going to work together as a group, and the whole process should take just a few hours with many hands.

And with many hands we can do more for God. Our church has started working with other churches in the area to do projects for the community, and pray together for our community. We can do so much more for the people in our community by working together, rather than each going our own way and doing our own thing. Or worse, competing against each other for some reason. I just know that fruit will come of our partnership, that God will bless our endeavors by us working together.

At the same time, I love that this passage in the Bible is also practical. It simply tells us how different languages came into being. It's a practical thing that someone might question. We are also told that at this point the Lord scattered people all over the earth. So we now now how a lot of indigenous people came into being. What these verses don't say, and what I wonder is how these people were scattered. Did they simply go their own ways, and many of them took to long solo voyages across seas and plains? Or was it a divine scattering, with people finding themselves in the Amazonian Jungle or the Siberian Dessert. Just another one of those many questions to ask God when I get to Heaven.

One last point I want to make about these verses is about God's intervention. Just as we saw with Noah, God kind of let the earth take it's own course for awhile. And then, when the timing was perfect, God became directly involved and changed the course. When the timing was perfect for him and his plans. That is a seriously exciting thought to me! Certainly we see other examples of this in the Bible, but it also makes me wonder about today. What does God dictate as perfect timing in our lives to intervene? I think about when Andy was let go from his previous job. Odd to think about it now, but that was truly an act of God. Andy is a loyal person and will stick with a job- he was determined to stick with his job, and then he was suddenly let go and an even better job came along just a few hours later. God directly intervened twice in one day. Once on the heart of Andy's boss to let him go, and once on the heart of Andy's new boss to hire Andy. Now Andy loves his job, and he has had great opportunities to witness to his co-workers. He has been able to plant many seeds, thanks to God's direct interference.

So my question today is this: Has there been a point in your life where you can see God's sudden interference? Sometimes it's not obvious, and sometimes it's not obviously good either- as in the case of Andy being dismissed. How could that be a good thing? God always has his reasons, and it's up to us to be open to his reasons, and willing to accept his interference whenever he sees fit.