Shem’s Wife
by Emily Brown, age 16
Elana stood on the deck, looking up at the sky.
Her husband, her husband’s brothers, and her husband’s parents were all inside, feeding the animals. Inside, where it was dry. Where the rain couldn’t reach them.
After 40 days and nights, the rain was getting tiresome, but it reflected beautifully how she felt.
She shifted her gaze downwards, to the ocean that had risen over the earth. The ocean that had swallowed everyone she had ever known and loved. Her siblings. Her parents. Her closest friends. Everyone but the man she had wedded.
“Why, God?” she pleaded, talking to the God of her father-in-law. The one who had caused the rain, and told Noah to build the structure that was keeping them afloat. “Why did You do this? Why did they die? Was there truly no other way?”
She did not see her husband come up behind her.
“You’re asking the wrong questions,” he said softly, brushing his wife’s sodden hair out of her eyes.
She frowned at him. “For the first time since Adam and Eve were banished there is water falling from the sky, everything is cold and wet all the time, we’re on a giant boat with stinking, dirty, wild animals that constantly need to be taken care of, and everything and everyone we know is gone. Gone! How am I asking the wrong questions? Please, Shem. Just … just tell me.”
He tried for a smile, but Elana could see the pain behind it. He’d lost people, too. They’d all lost people.
“Don’t ask ‘why did they die?'” he said. “They deserved to die. We all did, and the God of our ancestors is just. Ask ‘why were we spared?'”
Elana looked out over the endless waters. “Why were we spared?” she asked, quietly, barely audible through the rain. She wondered whether he might know the answer.
“Because the God who is holy and just is also faithful, and merciful,” Shem told her, the tone of his voice showing that he had struggled hard to reach that very conclusion. “Because when the first man fell, He promised him hope. The only thing that could get them through their fallen world. He promised them refuge. And He will always keep His promises.”
He looked her in the eyes. “Elana, my love,” he said. “He has not said that it will be easy. But He has promised us the same thing He promised our first forefather: hope. And someday, we will see what we do not see now. Someday, we will see His face once more, and our salvation.”
Gently, Shem kissed his wife on her cheek and tasted the salt of her tears among the raindrops. “I will be waiting inside when you are ready to come back, my love.”
Then he left her on the deck, and went back inside where it was dry.
For a moment, she stared at the water, the flood that had stolen everything she’d held dear, and was tempted to slip back into her despair.
But then she raised her eyes, and gasped aloud. It was as though God had heard them talking, and had known the doubt in her heart.
She ran, as fast as she could run on soaked floors, and called to the others. “Shem! Everyone, come look!”
And she knew that every word had been true.
Because for the first time in 40 days and 40 nights, there was no more water.
The rain had stopped.
About the Writer
Emily Brown is a teen author, poet, and singer/songwriter from Australia. She has so far been published in the Write the World Review as well as here in Pure in Heart Stories. You can also find her on YouTube under the stage name Emmi Byrd, where she hopes to glorify God and encourage listeners through her music and lyrics.
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Image: Noah’s Ark by Jacques Callot, National Gallery of Art, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
