Noah lived a simple life and worked hard every single day to provide for his family. He was up before the sun and never laid his head on his pillow until the sun had set again. As a carpenter, Noah would use his free time at work to build and create random items from his company's extra wood.
One day a lumberyard delivered a thousand loads of the wrong kind of wood to Noah’s company. Rather than sending it back, Noah’s boss let him have it and told him to do with it as he pleased. After looking at his collection of miniature wooden ships he had built and then back at the amount of wood that was delivered he came up with the grand idea of building a real wooden ship.
He went home that evening and told his family what had happened at work and told them of his idea to build a ship. They all laughed and told him he was crazy. They all had doubts that he could actually construct something so large. This angered Noah, so he stormed off to bed.
The next day at work Noah started his construction of the ship. Piece-by-piece and board-by-board he worked tirelessly on this ship. After almost six months working day in and day out on this project that no one believed in, Noah stood before a beautiful wooden ship. The entire community was shocked by the size of the ship. No one knew what he would ever do with such a thing.
The night Noah completed the ship he fell asleep with a slight smirk on his face. He was proud that he had proved everyone wrong. However, that very night Noah had the worst night's sleep he had ever experienced. He had terrible nightmares of a terrible rainfall that covered the entire Earth.
Noah woke up the next morning and noticed that it was raining. At that point he knew that the dream was more than just a dream; it was a sign! He gathered his family, friends, and citizens of his community, and then told them of his dream. He encouraged everyone to get on the boat immediately. Laughter broke out among the crowd. Everyone called him crazy and went home. As the day continued, the rainfall began to come down harder and harder. It was at that point that Noah’s family finally took him seriously and decided to get on the ship.
Shortly after they were settled on the ship, they looked outside to see animals everywhere. Noah and his wife went to the main loading dock and opened it up. The animals automatically started loading themselves onto the ship by twos. Noah and his wife were amazed and shocked. As soon as all of the animals were boarded, they shut the door.
The rain was beginning to cause minor flooding throughout the village in which Noah and his family lived. As it got worse and worse people started to gather at the main loading deck, yelling at Noah to let them in. Noah knew there was no more room now that the animals had boarded, so he refused to let them on. It was almost in that same instance that the entire village heard a grumbling voice come from the sky.
“I tried to warn you. You had your chance to board with Noah earlier. You gave up that chance, so I allowed the animals of this world to take your place. You will now suffer the consequences.”
Everyone was panicked and ran back to their homes. Noah looked up to the sky and knew exactly what had happened. God had chosen him. God took his master woodworking skills and used them to save him and his family, as well as the animals of his world.
Shortly after, the ship lifted off the solid ground. From the upper deck, Noah and his family watched the village become completely submerged. Noah wrapped his arms around his wife and children and drifted away into the endless water, never to see their old village again.
(Picture of
Rainfall in the distance, from Wikimedia Commons)
This story is based off the readings from Noah and the Ark. I kept the main character as Noah, but I wanted the scene to seem a little more modern day. I chose to write this story in a sense of everything happens for a reason. I truly believe that everything does happen for a reason, so I wanted to portray that in my writing. In its original Biblical setting, God gives the commands to Noah, and then Noah follows through. But I wanted to make it seem as if Noah simply had a dream about what was going to happen and felt the need to follow through on those gut instincts. Of course at the end I brought back the whole idea of God talking directly to him, but only to bring back in a little bit of the original story. I included the background of why Noah even had all that wood and portrayed Noah as a carpenter in order to follow along with my theme and moral of the story. Having Noah as a character that was already building a boat just for the heck of it because he wanted to shows that his random action was actually meant to be helpful to him down the road; hence, everything happens for a reason.
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