Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
The moment we crossed the threshold into the Ark, I held my breath, waiting for the miracle. I expected a rush of wind, or perhaps a sudden, holy hush to fall over my three delinquent best friends. I wanted them to be struck by the Spirit the way a lightning bolt hits a copper rod.
“Wow,” Sylvie whispered, her head tilted back as she looked up toward the sky.
I practically squealed with excitement.
This is it, I thought, squeezing the rosary dangling from my neck. It was happening to her. One step inside the Ark and the Lord was already granting my wish… to fill them with his Spirit the way He’d filled me since I was a little girl kneeling beside my bed in my nightgown.
Come on, Lord. Do your thing.
“Look at the massive timber columns. This is actually a lot cooler than I expected. The engineering alone is mind-boggling.”
My shoulders slumped after her “wow” hadn’t been about feeling the Spirit rushing into her… it had been about wooden beams.
“It smells incredible. Is that… cedar?” Marge mused, her nose wrinkling. “Kinda smells like Home Depot. Love that smell.”
My shoulders slumped more.
Alice removed her sunglasses as her eyes adjusted to the dim, atmospheric lighting. Then she looked up at the soaring wooden ceiling above us. “Okay, Doris. You were right.”
I held my breath. Right about you being filled with the Holy Spirit the moment you stepped inside the Ark?
“This is really something. Very cool,” she finished.
My shoulders slumped forward even more. Very cool? Not what someone says as the light of the Lord is washing through them.
“It’s incredible,” Sylvie breathed, turning slowly. “What an absolute marvel.”
I beamed, my heart fluttering with hope again. See, Lord? They’re noticing Your handiwork. We’re halfway there!
As we moved through the first deck, animal sounds and the pitter-patter of rain echoed through the speakers.
It was atmospheric and grand. We moved deeper into Deck One, where the wide corridor opened up into rows of enormous wooden cages on either side, towering overhead, filled with life-size replica animals peering out between the bars.
The detail was extraordinary—the texture of fur, the glass eyes catching the light.
Around us, families moved slowly, children pressing their faces to the cage bars.
I walked and prayed quietly, watching my widows from the corner of my eye.
Marge suddenly slid to a stop in front of a cage containing two life-size dinosaurs—small ones, juvenile versions, the exhibit explaining that young animals would have taken up less space and been easier to manage on the voyage.
Marge turned to me with an expression of pure, uncut joy.
“Doris.” She grabbed my arm. “There are dinosaurs on the Ark.”
“Yes, I know—”
“Dinosaurs. On Noah’s. Ark.”
“They would have been young ones, you see, because—”
“I don’t care why! There are DINOSAURS!” She pulled out her phone. “Sylvie! Alice! Get over here! DINOSAURS!”
The others appeared, studying the juvenile dinosaur replicas, then the exhibit placard explaining the theological and scientific reasoning.
“This is really interesting,” Sylvie said. “I didn’t know about the dinosaurs either. Just one species, or how did that work? I can’t imagine a boatful of every type of dinosaur.”
“They’re kinds,” I explained patiently. “God saved every kind of creature.”
Marge grinned. “I’m just saying, if I’m Noah, the raptors are definitely the first things I ‘accidentally’ forget at the dock. One lapse in locking that gate and they’re eating the sheep and then Noah and his family. It’s a buffet on a boat.”
“You know,” Alice said, “I came in here fully prepared to be bored, and yet.”
“Right?” Marge was already taking photos. “This is incredible. Doris, you absolute sneak. You buried the dinosaur lead.”
“I didn’t know you’d be so excited about the dinosaurs,” I said, flustered but delighted.
“Of course I’m excited about the dinosaurs! Who wouldn’t be? Nobody tells you there are dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark! That’s the whole commercial! Lead with the dinosaurs, Doris!”
We moved through the rest of the animals, the girls oohing and ahhing over the display, the conversation full of questions and contemplations as they tried to make sense of this miracle.
My excitement started to rise when Marge said, “Man, that Noah and his family really had a lot of crap to shovel, didn’t they?”
It wasn’t the crude statement that had me smiling—it was that Marge believed in Noah. And if Marge believed in Noah, then… she must believe in God!
It’s working, God. Keep showing them the way!
“Wait. So, if… How many animals were in here?” Sylvie asked.
“Almost seven thousand,” I answered.
“And they were all pooping and peeing, so it must have smelled…” She squished up her face. “Eew. It must have been terrible!”
Alice mirrored her disgusted face. “Oh, I grew up on a farm. Even with fresh air and only a couple dozen animals, the smell could be pungent. I can still smell it even sixty years since I last set foot on that farm.”
“They had a system for the manure!” I hurried over and pointed at the display on how Noah had brilliantly designed the Ark for just such a thing.
The girls came over and studied the exhibit explaining the waste management system—an elaborate diagram of channels, collection troughs, and automated systems for managing the waste of thousands of animals over forty days and nights.
“This is literally an exhibit about poop.” Marge snickered.
“Marge! It’s part of the miracle of the Ark!” I defended.
“Yeah, but does it work? What would happen if I peed in that cage? Think it would drain right out like it says?”
“Don’t pee in the cages!” I pressed a hand to my head.
“I’m not going to do it.” Marge peered into the cage. “I’m just saying… what would happen if I did?”
“Stop questioning the miracle!” I shot back, face heating up by the moment.
“Speaking of miracles, why didn’t God just make them, I don’t know… not need to crap for the journey? Now that would be a miracle,” Alice said.
I scoffed, waving toward the cages. “Because the miracle wasn’t avoiding the mess. The miracle was that God saved them and gave them a way to survive. Noah still had to do the work.”
Marge nodded at Alice. “Yeah! Or why not just magically levitate all the animals while the floods came and then set them back down after? Why even need the Ark?”
My blood boiled at the question. How were they not getting it?
“Because the Ark was the miracle!” I said too loudly, exasperated.
“God didn’t just snap His fingers and make everything fly.
He gave Noah instructions. He gave him the animals.
He gave him the strength to build it. That’s the whole point.
Faith means trusting God enough to do what He asks—even when it sounds ridiculous and involves…
a lot of shoveling.” I gestured wildly toward the waste-management diagram.
“And honestly, if God had just levitated everything, we wouldn’t have the story, would we? ”
When I finished my tangent, they stood staring at me, blinking.
“Sheesh. Sorry,” Marge whispered, looking at the crowd around us peering over. “It was just a question.”
“You okay, Doris?” Sylvie asked, her brows furrowed as she stared at me.
I realized I’d overreacted and shrank a little. “Sorry. I just… This is serious to me, okay?”
“We know, sweetie.” Sylvie stepped forward and brushed my arm. “They were just asking questions. No one was being rude. Just… curious the way they are.”
The heat started to drain from my face as I stared at them, my widows. She was right. They were the way they were, and sometimes I thought God put them directly in my path to test my faith. But today, deep down, I hoped he’d put them in my path so I could share my faith.
“Let’s just keep going,” I said, moving past them, trying to hide my disappointment that they weren’t all sobbing at the miracle of Noah already.
Patience, Doris. They’ll get it. They have to.
Deck Two opened up into the pre-flood-world exhibits and the family living quarters, where life-size figures of Noah’s sons occupied elaborately detailed rooms—a workshop, a library, a garden with low-light plants, each son given a full biography and a set of interests and hobbies imagined by the exhibit designers.
The widows seemed genuinely interested in all the elaborate details, and admittedly, I was too busy watching them, waiting for the lightbulb moment, to pay as close attention to the details as I should have.
I tried to stay focused, really let the breadth of the miracle seep into my every pore, but I couldn’t stop staring at them instead.
“You know,” Alice said, gazing at a model figure of one of Noah’s sons, “I have to say, Ham and Japheth were surprisingly handsome. If I had to be trapped on a boat for forty days and nights, I wouldn’t have minded sharing a grain bin with them.”
She waggled her eyebrows, and the girls erupted in laughter.
“Alice! Language!” I hissed, darting a nervous look around to see if any of the nearby church groups had heard her. “We are in a holy place!”
Marge chuckled, nudging me. “It’s a boat, Doris, not a confessional.”
They weren’t being unkind. They were having fun. They were genuinely impressed, genuinely engaged—more than I’d honestly expected—but they weren’t having an epiphany. They were treating it like a very large, very impressive museum.
Nobody was weeping. Nobody was looking around with the stunned expression of someone whose soul had just been rearranged. Nobody had pulled me aside to say, Doris, I think I feel something. This wasn’t the fruits of spiritual transformation I had been praying for.
By the time we reached the “Door of the Bible”—a massive glowing exhibit with a cross illuminated on it—my desperation had peaked.
This was it. The big one. The place of reverence believers like me truly felt in awe.
But would they feel it too?