If we use 100 years as a modern human lifespan, an equivalent age for Noah’s calling would be just over 63-right about the time many Westerners are thinking about retiring and “taking it easy.”Īs I look out over the “mighty” church, I see many lions and lionesses of God who are asleep in a world not unlike Noah’s. Noah lived to be 950 years old and was 600 when the great Flood came upon the earth. He was like a lion that had slept for six hundred years and was then awakened to fulfill his true calling and destiny.
Noah was advanced in years, and yet Noah said “Yes” to God. He had labored unremarkably for the first two-thirds of his life and was approaching “retirement age.” But then God’s call awakened him. We know absolutely nothing about the first six hundred years of Noah’s life except that he was “a righteous man, the only blameless person living on earth at the time, and he walked in close fellowship with God” (Genesis 6:9, NLT). Noah was nearing his six-hundredth birthday when God came to him with a mission to save the world. No reason, that is, except for a man named Noah. Looking around, God could find no reason to rejoice in what He had made and no reason to preserve it. The days of Noah were dark ones on the good earth God had created. God’s oldie was a man named Noah, one of the most familiar and famous individuals in the Bible.
But did you know that God had an “oldie but a goodie” near the beginning of recorded history-from whom we can learn a valuable lesson about being awakened for a new and good purpose in God’s kingdom? And “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” is definitely an oldie and a goodie in the annals of popular music. Shaka the Lion was an old king who was expected to awaken to a good purpose. The word Seeger transcribed as wimoweh was really uyimbube, Zulu for “you are a lion”-a reference to the legendary Shaka the Lion. At least that’s the way the legend was recounted by famous American folk singer, Pete Seeger, on his album With Voices Together We Sing (Live).Įven many younger people today are familiar with the bass chant, “Wimoweh, uh-wimoweh, uh-wimoweh, uh-wimoweh,” over which float the haunting falsetto lyrics, “In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight.” Pete Seeger created the word “wimoweh” as he transcribed the words to the song off an album made by a South African singing group, The Evening Birds. When Europeans began to establish themselves in that country, it is said that Shaka didn’t die-he simply went to sleep, to be awakened one day and resume his powerful rule over his people. Legend has it that many years ago there was a South African king of the Zulu tribe named Shaka the Lion.
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