My bathroom scale can keep track of the weights of 2 people. After you weigh yourself, it asks if you are #1 or #2. Then it will tell you how much you have gained or lost.

David normally weighs himself on the scales downstairs. Once he weighed himself on my scale and hit #2. That was sometime last year.

Monday, I weighed myself and didn’t like the number. I moved the scale closer to the sink. (The sub-floor was not glued down when they built the house. I can get a different reading if I am on a stud.) I was in a hurry. I stepped on the scale before it had finished asking, “#1 or #2.”

The scale said I lost 77 pounds. I hadn’t. That was the difference between my weight and David’s weight last year. I had lost weight in the last week – 4 ounces. (Sigh.)

That is how God works – little by little.

Genesis 8:3, “Inch by inch the water lowered. After 150 days the worst was over.” The Message

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“…Noah, his family and the animals, confined in the ark – 371 days.” Chronological Study Bible Notes

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Genesis 8:13, “In the six-hundred-first year of Noah’s life, on the first day of the first month, the flood had dried up. Noah opened the hatch of the ship and saw dry ground.” The Message

Noah spent 100 years building the Ark and preaching to whoever would listen. He didn’t have 1 convert. Then he spent a year in the Ark with his family and all the animals.

He really needed a vacation! I’m sure he longed to rest on the beach watching the waves roll in. Instead, he put God first and built an altar, (see Genesis 8:20).

Noah was ready to retire. He was 601 years old and had just survived the worst disaster on the earth. Yet God was not finished with him.

God instructed him and his sons to “Prosper! Reproduce! Fill the Earth!”, (see Genesis 9:1). Before he became an “Ark builder,” Noah was a farmer. He planted a vineyard, (see Genesis 9:20).

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When you have an empty nest, you are not finished. When you step back from your life’s work, you are not finished. Remember the gifts and desires from your youth? Start developing them. Grandma Moses didn’t start painting in earnest until she was 78 years old.

We are to prosper, produce, and fill the earth until the day we die. Take one small step. “Inch by inch, life is a cinch…”

What did you want to do when you were a child? Did you dream of inventing something? What would you like to create? How do you preserve your memories? Journaling? Painting? Photography?

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