When the oceans rise...

Whoever says that the great flood of Noah’s time couldn’t have happened should visit Dili during the monsoon season.

This was the scene right outside the library, after a three-hour downpour. That was all it took to flood the library again, for the second time in seven months.

The difference was that, this time round, we were inside the library when the torrential rains came. As the water level rose slowly but surely, we started moving things to higher ground. A sense of desperation set in quickly as we watched each inch of ground go underwater…finally flowing into the library, from the back door. LS and I, and another local friend worked quickly, trying to contain the flood to just one area. But huge puddles of water started forming in the other rooms. That was when we realized that the water was actually seeping in through cracks on the floor and from the walls! So we were fighting a losing battle.

As I mopped and cleaned and swept frantically, Genesis 7:11 came to mind.

“In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the foundations of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.”

It wasn’t just rain that flooded the earth back then. The huge bodies of water underground also burst and gushed through the ground, the same way that water was flowing in from the ground. If ever there was any doubt that the great flood could have happened, it disappeared there and then!

Eventually we gave up trying to clean the library – the rain had stopped to a drizzle, but the water level all around the library was still very high. There was simply nowhere we could throw out the water from inside the library. We went home and left the cleanup for the next day.

On a random note, both floods have reminded me of William Carey, whose example encouraged me greatly amid all the splishing and splashing. A massive fire in 1812 devoured his printing shop at Seramore, India, destroying his completed Sanskrit dictionary, part of his Bengal dictionary, ten translations of the bible, amongst other important materials he had laboured to produce.

Carey is reported to have said these words in response to the huge setback.

“In one short evening, the labours of years are consumed. How unsearchable are the ways of God…The Lord has laid me low, that I may look more simply to Him.

The loss is heavy, but as traveling a road the second time is usually done with greater ease than the first time, so I trust the work will lose nothing of real value. We are not discouraged; indeed the work is already begun again in every language. We are cast down but not in despair.”

Unknown to Carey then, the fire brought his ministry to the world’s attention. In just over fifty days in England and Scotland alone, about ten thousand pounds were raised for rebuilding the printing press. So much funds poured in that Andrew Fuller, a leader of the mission in England told the fund-raising committee, “ We must stop the contributions.”

May the sheer tenacity and perseverance of our missionary predecessors inspire us to reach deep and find the strength to keep going.