How do you feel about starting over?
We experience fresh starts all the time in life. We transition from job to job, move from one house to another, and sometimes even relocate to a new city. Students advance from grade to grade, school to school. Every time we meet someone new, it’s like starting with a blank canvas, an opportunity to build a brand-new relationship.
Life itself moves in seasons—both in terms of the calendar and in the different phases of our lives. Some new beginnings are exciting. We call them “fresh starts”—a new job, a new home, a new opportunity. Sometimes, a fresh start is exactly what we need. When a project isn’t going well, it’s often easier to scrap it and start over. When we say something we regret, we long for a chance to hit reset.
But not every fresh start feels good. Sometimes, starting over is frustrating, even heartbreaking. When I was a kid, we used to put puzzles together on my parents’ game room table. Some of them had hundreds of pieces, and we’d spend hours working on them as a family. But we had dogs—big dogs. And every once in a while, one of them would bump the table, sending pieces crashing to the floor. Suddenly, we had to start all over.
Or, to put it in more modern terms—have you ever worked for hours on a project on your computer, only for it to crash before you could save? That sinking feeling of losing all your progress is exactly how some fresh starts feel.
We all face new beginnings in life. The question is, how will we handle them? Will we see them as opportunities or obstacles?
Today, we’re going to look at one of the freshest starts in history—Noah and his family after the flood. With the earth wiped clean, Noah had a literal blank slate. Humanity was starting over.
From Genesis 8-9, we’re going to discover three key principles from Noah’s story that can help us navigate the new beginnings in our own lives.