What’s a cubit?

The confirmation students dug into the story of Noah this week.

Make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch.  This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits.  [Genesis 6:5]

As God calls Noah to build an ark for a flood will come, it’s these building instructions He passes on.  He is to build this giant boat, take aboard his family, and gather two of every animal.

Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.  [Genesis 6:22]

Noah believed.  Noah had faith that God was at work.  And so an ark he built.

A HUGE ark!  Did you know a cubit is approximately the distance from a grown man’s elbow to the tip of his finger?  At confirmation, we did our own approximate cubit measurements.

We determined that the ark was about ten fellowship rooms long.  Holy cow!  That’s huge!

We know the story.  God had seen that the world was overcome with sin and it grieved him.   The rains come.  The flood happens.

And then there is promise.

I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. [Genesis 9:13]

Never again.  A promise worth a whole lot of cubits.