Story story behind the Olive Leaf

I love this so much....

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Water. All Noah could see was water. The evening sun sinks into it. the clouds are reflected in it. His boat is surrounded by it. Water. Water to the north. Water to the south. Water to the east. Water to the west.

Finally the boat bumped, and the rocking stopped. Noah gave the hatch a shove and poked his head through. The hull of the ark was resting on the ground, but the ground was still surrounded by water.

He sent a raven on a scouting mission; it never returned. He sent a dove. It came back shivering and spent, having found no place to roost. Then he tried again, he pulled a dove out from the bowels of the ark, kissed the bird and sent it away with a pounding heart. Will he be able to find land?

All day he looked for the bird? Will it return? But he saw nothing. Not in the morning, not in the afternoon. The sun is now setting. All he still sees is water. Water all around him.

You know the feeling. The feeling of being flooded. Flood by sorrows, by deaths, separation, problems at work, with relationships, by illnesses. You’ve been on Noah’s boat. And you have needed what Noah needed. You needed some hope. You didn’t need an instant solution but you would appreciate the possibility of an eventual one.

Noah stared at the horizon. Here’s how the bible described the moment! “When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf!” (Gen 8: 11)

This leaf was more than a foliage. This was promise. The bird brought hope!!

Hope is an olive leaf – evidence of dry land after a flood.
Proof to the dreamer that the dreaming is worth the risk.

***summarised by jul