The story of the Tower of Babel may not be a text that we would think of for Advent, but it tells us again the story that is at the heart of Christian faith. Humankind is in prideful rebellion against God and what we have seen thus far in Genesis is when that is the case there is only violence and harm that is coming. So, God in his grace acts in his commitment to his creation and in love for humanity. And what do we find at the center of the story, but what we find at the very center of Christianity: God comes down!!!

The story of Noah reveals profound truths about God's existence, His care for creation, and His unwavering covenant. God's covenant with Noah highlights His intimate and relational promise to sustain the natural order and humanity. Noah’s story also mirrors the creation and fall, foreshadowing our redemption through Jesus Christ.

Noah may seem like an odd story to start advent with, but what is advent but the observation that God remembers his promise to crush the head of the serpent, to deal with sin and that he has done so in Jesus. It is a remembering Christ's first coming and a sitting in the longing for his second. "But God remembered" is at the heart of the Noah story. And that central fact is what distinguishes this story from the other Ancient Near Eastern Flood stories and it is literally at the heart of the story, as both a big-picture thematic chiasm and the detailed numeric chiasm points us to Genesis 8:1. "But God remembered".