Through the Flood to the Other Side

On August 29, 2017, Diane Morrison stood chest-deep in floodwater inside her Houston home as Hurricane Harvey refused to stop. For three days the rain fell — relentless, terrifying, apocalyptic. Her neighborhood off Brays Bayou became an inland sea. Everything she owned was submerged. She was certain she would drown.

Then a bass boat appeared in her living room doorway. Two strangers from the Cajun Navy — volunteers who had driven twelve hours from Louisiana — pulled her aboard. They carried her through the very waters that had threatened to kill her. The flood that destroyed her old life became the road to her rescue. She passed through the water, not around it.

This is precisely what Peter wants us to see in the story of Noah and in the waters of baptism. The floodwaters that judged the ancient world were the same waters that lifted the ark to safety. Eight souls were carried through destruction into a new beginning. Peter says baptism works the same way — not as a bath for the body, but as a pledge of a clear conscience before the Almighty, made possible because Jesus Christ passed through death itself and came out alive on the other side.

The cross was not a detour around suffering. It was the righteous One walking straight through judgment so that the unrighteous could be carried to God. Whatever flood you face today, the One who conquered death is steering the boat.