Day 3 --Genesis 8-11

A note about Bible time--The Bible is concerned only with human time, measured in years and lifetimes. The vast eons before the creation of human beings and their establishment in the garden are condensed into a week of six days. Bible time is human time, measured by human experience--being conceived, born, and dying. But the story of Creation in Bible does not contradict, to mind at least, the truth that the universe is thousands of millions of years old.
In one of the comments you mentioned a little boy named Xavier who loves dinosaurs and asks a lot of questions. It reminded me of what it was like to be a boy who loved dinosaurs and asked a lot of questions. Back on the ranch in western North Dakota, where I grew up, I gathered an impressive collection of fossils, of which I was very proud. One day I showed my collection to my great-uncle Dwight, who was a fundamentalist Christian. He refused to even touch them because, as he told me, the devil had created them in order to lead foolish people into unbelief.
His words made me very angry, even at the age of ten, because I knew better. I could tell he was afraid of the truth, that was why he said my fossil collection was the work of the devil. I knew, even then, that the devil cannot create anything. Only God could be responsible for something as wonderful as a dinosaur.
Creation in time--evolution--and the existence of wonderful species that lived in worlds that have vanished and are found only the fossil record only demonstates how wonderful is the God we worship. He reveals himself in the stones as well as in the words of Scripture.
He is a God who creates things just for the fun of it--like a little boy. He is a God who loves dinosaurs. The Book of Psalms gives praise to the God who made the sea "great and wide," filled with "creeping thing innumerable," with "living things both small and great," including "Leviathan," which the Lord "made for the sport of it."
Leviathan could be a blue whale, of course, but it might also be a dinosaur. It doesn't matter.
Consider this--There is only one truth, and where ever we find it--in the Scriptures or in stones--that truth leads us to God.

In our reading for today God says to Noah: "When I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh" (9:14-15). To the whole living world--to every living creature--God gives a promise. He says--Whatever self-destructive things you do to yourselves, I will not destroy you. I will remember my promise. I will work for life even when you are intent on death.
And the rainbow, the spectrum spread out across te damp sky, is the visible sign of the promise and of God's faithfulness. After that last terrible deluge, the catastrophe that wiped the earth clean, God made a promise not to let the elements swallow up the earth again. God made a promise to forgive and not to destroy.
But will he keep it? that what we wonder. Will he let nature overwhelm us? Will we be destroyed? The rainbow says no, but still we wonder. . . .
We make promises and we break them. We make vows and then we cancel them. That's just human--that unfaithfulness. But God is not like us in this.
God is like us in many ways. He is angry. He has pity. He changes his mind. But he cannot break his promises. When he says is will do something, he cannot go back on the promise. He is constrained by his very nature to keep the covenants he makes. His faithfulness is perfect--that is the constant witness of the Bible. And that constant faithfulness is the foundation upon which we can build our lives.
All-powerful, he is also helpless.
Even when we have broken our promises to Him and to each other, God is ready to help us put our broken families and our fractured marriages back together again. He is ready to help us clean up our soiled earth. He is commited. He must come through. He cannot help it.