92. The Ark

Today I rescued a frog from our freshly chlorinated pool. Whenever I move a frog from a place of danger to a safer location, I think of a movie we were shown in Junior High School.

I can’t remember the name of that school movie: Eden, Genesis, something like that. It was about a future world destroyed by pollution, by man. The sky was gray with smog, everyone wore gas masks. One man, a scientist? took it upon himself to build a huge greenhouse, a self contained glass bubble in an inhospitable land.

He worked tirelessly to cultivate growth inside, and rescue anything still surviving outside the bubble. So now I’m getting to the frog. The opening scene is of a frog hopping along on the cracked, parched earth. Sounds of the city and industry fill the air with noise pollution. You wonder where in the world this movie is set, and why a frog is out in the middle of that industrial wasteland. Then a man gently picks up the frog, and returns to a greenhouse. The lush sounds of water flowing and birds singing are such a contrast to the world outside. I don’t remember there being any dialogue, just the sounds. But there’s a story line. The movie ends with the outsiders wanting to get in, presumably to exploit the last of what was left of the natural world. This couldn’t happen without destroying the fragile environment the man had so carefully balanced. They press their masked faces to the glass, growing more agitated when the scientist could not let them enter. Someone starts throwing rocks at the glass, soon the crowd joins in, and all is destroyed.

That same year, Earth Day was instituted.

Come to think of it, there were lots of movies and documentaries about the “environmental crisis” as it was called back then. We all sang along to “In the Year 2525” on our transistor radios.

Another movie, Soylent Green, was made in 1972. It made you feel guilty for living, and therefore using resources, thereby destroying the environment. So your patriotic duty was to “give back” what your carbon footprint took. It was outlandish and shocking. And get this, it was set in the year 2022. I kid you not.

So, here we are, in the year 2022. Once again, the focus is on climate change, and we’re told things are winding down, and winding down quickly. And here I am, in the last two chapters of Revelation as I slowly progress through my Bible Sampler quilt blocks.

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.” Rev. 21:1

The next block looks like an H rather than a gate. No matter, all that matters is that we make it through that gate to the other side. That scientist couldn’t open his doors to let others into his Eden. And for all his efforts, he was unable to save the earth. But it’s all going to pass away anyways, and we have our rescue. Jesus is the gatekeeper to His new heaven and new earth. In fact, he IS the gate. In John 14:6 Jesus declared “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

P.S. I just googled and found the name of the movie, it was “Ark”. Whether ark, or gate, or cross, we have passage through this world to the next secured in Jesus. Amen.