Water. All Noah can see is water. You can relate. You’ve known your share of floods. Flooded by sorrow at the cemetery, anger at the disability in your body, fear of the uncertainty of a pandemic. And you’ve needed what Noah needed; you’ve needed hope. Sometimes all we need is a little hope. That’s all Noah needed, and that’s what Noah received. This is how the Bible describes the moment: “When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf!” (Genesis 8:11).
Hope is an olive leaf—evidence of dry land after a flood. Could you use some hope? Could you use a fresh start? At some point in life we all could. And the oh-so-welcome news of Scripture is this: our God is a God of fresh starts.