We're reading out of Genesis 8, starting in verse 13.

By the first day of the first month of Noah's 6001st year, the water had dried up from the earth.

Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry.

By the 27th day of the second month, the earth was completely dry.

Then God said to Noah, come out of the ark. You and your wife and your sons and their wives.

Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you, the birds, the animals,

and all the creatures that move along the ground.

So they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon it.

So Noah came out together with his sons and his wife and his son's wives.

All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds,

everything that moves on the earth, came out of the ark, one kind after another.

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and taking all the clean animals and clean birds,

he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The Lord smelled

the pleasing aroma and said in his heart, never again will I curse the ground because of man,

even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy

all living creatures as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat,

summer and winter, day and night will never cease. Then God bless Noah and his sons, saying to them,

be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks, be to God.

When I was in my mid-20s, I lived on the Lower Side of Manhattan

with an NYU Law student for a roommate.

He was trying to become a human rights lawyer,

...