Rain

Genesis 7:4 - "Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made."

Some have put forth the idea that this was the first time it rained anywhere on earth. Before this, they say that the climate was much different; springs and mists did the job for plants and animals, so rain was not needed. I don't know if that's correct or not, and it doesn't matter.

But let's assume for now that this was the case. I wonder then if Noah even understood what God told him when he said it would rain for over a month. If it had never rained before, how would Noah know rain when he saw it?

And think of all of the other thousands (millions? billions?) of people who hadn't heard this message. I wonder what they thought as the skies got dark and menacing. Assuming the entire sky clouded over worldwide, I think it would have been almost dark as night during normal daytime hours.

How frightening would it have been to suddenly have water falling from the sky when it had never done so before? Did they even realize it was only water? Water wasn't supposed to come from up there! They got water from lakes, rivers, the local watertower and treatment plant -- not from the sky!

And what about the half of the world that first experienced all this in the middle of the night? Did the neighbor lady who couldn't get to sleep run outside when she heard something hitting the roof? Did she run back in and wake up her husband and tell him to call 911 because something really weird was happening? Could he even get through because everyone else was calling too? Did they wake up the neighbors to see if they knew what was going on? Were the Walter Cronkites and Ted Koppels of the day at a loss for words?

Was there time for anyone to begin implementing their disaster plans before "all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened"? I think that besides the mercy shown to Noah and his family, God was mercifully quick (when the 120 years were finally at an end) in ending everything for everyone else.