Morning Devotionals

by Don Emmitte

 

February 26th, 2008

 

“The Doomsday Vault”

At one time all the people of the world spoke the same language and used the same words. As the people migrated to the east, they found a plain in the land of Babylonia and settled there. They began saying to each other, “Let’s make bricks and harden them with fire.” (In this region bricks were used instead of stone, and tar was used for mortar.) Then they said, “Come, let’s build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky. This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world.” (Genesis 4:1-4 NLT).

I just love to browse the news! It often has some little nugget buried in the back pages that reminds me of how foolish man can be at times. Look at the following Associated Press release from yesterday:

Aimed at providing mankind with a Noah's Ark of food in the event of a global catastrophe, an Arctic "doomsday vault" filled with samples of the world's most important seeds will be inaugurated here Tuesday. The vault, which has been carved into the permafrost of a remote Arctic mountain, just some 620 miles from the North Pole, is made up of three spacious cold chambers each measuring 89 x 33 feet, create a long trident-shaped tunnel bored into the sandstone and limestone. It has the capacity to hold up to 4.5 million batches of seeds from all known varieties of the planet's main food crops, making it possible to re-establish plants if they disappear from their natural environment or are obliterated by major disasters. Norway has assumed the 8.9 million dollar charge for building the vault in its Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, where ironically no crops grow. By the time of the inauguration on Tuesday, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault should hold some 250,000 samples, which will remain the property of their countries of origin. Protected by high walls of fortified concrete, an armored door, a sensor alarm and the native polar bears that roam the region, the "doomsday vault" has been built 425 feet above current sea level -- high enough that it would not flood if the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melt entirely due to global warming. The concrete cocoon has also been built to withstand nuclear missile attacks or a plunging plane, something that could come in handy in light of the 6.4-scale tremor -- the biggest earthquake in Norway's history -- registered near the archipelago on Thursday.

While it is a good idea to be prepared for disaster, even on such an epic proportion as worldwide devastation, I think it is also an illustration of the danger of the presumptive nature of man. This is especially true when we look at this temptation on a personal level. We should never find ourselves presuming upon God. Rather our call is to live in the day he has given us and trust him for our future. Prepare for the future, in every way possible, but only trust in Him.