The One Year Bible - Day 3 - A man on a mission

I love Noah and the ark. There is so much meaning here and the readings today allude to Noah being a picture of baptism which is great but also commonly covered. I wanted to pick up on something more straight-forward and that is Noah as a man on a mission and the elements that can be looked for in our own callings and ministries. Although what Noah did was massive and obviously life-changing, I still think it can be applied to all of our day-to-day spiritual callings and can be used as a measure of whether we are in God's will.
First, we have God's revelation. Now he reveals his plans to Noah, who was righteous. Does this mean that God only reveals himself to righteous people? In my experience he reveals himself commonly to many people in different ways and for different reasons.
Then there is God's calling where he tells Noah to build an ark. We are usually too quick to assume a calling once we have a need revealed to us and this is dangerous because God might want to call someone else, or perhaps he will call us but not yet. We mustn't assume that need=calling since there is much need in the world but we must work inside God's timing and wisdom and not ours.
God then reminds Noah of His promise which is something that can keep us going as we soldier on. We all have dreams of massive ministries with thousands of converts but Noah reminds us that much of our mission in life is plain hard work. Noah worked for probably around 100 years to build this ark. He didn't go to the local DIY store and ask for 100000 lengths of wood, he and his sons had to cut trees down and shape all the wood to build this massive ark. Even during the flood, he was in the ark for about a year probably wondering what on earth was going on.
We then have this great picture of God's hand quite literally closing the door on the ark. We aren't told why He had to do it or whether it was out of necessity (to ensure it was closed tight enough to be waterproof) but we have this reminder again to Noah that God is actually at the reigns here. I can imagine Noah scratching his head looking at the door and asking his sons how they were going to close it, "I thought you were going to sort that out", "Well we could hang over the outside", "no, that would never work" and then God coming along and handling the situation. One of the most humbling aspects of ministry is when God does something that we can't do to remind us that it is not our ministry but His.
We then have a post-mission nightmare when Noah comes out to a post-apocalyptic world presumably covered with dead bodies and mud which must have knocked the wind out of his sails. There is much here to learn about finishing ministry but that is for another day!