mber that God had placed it in the sky and over the
clouds as a sign of his promise, that he would always remember the
earth, and the people upon it, and would never again send a flood to
destroy man from the earth.

So as often as we see the beautiful rainbow, we are to remember that it
is the sign of God's promise to the world.

THE STORY OF HAGAR AND ISHMAEL

After the great flood the family of Noah and those who came after him
grew in number, until, as the years went on, the earth began to be full
of people once more. But there was one great difference between the
people who had lived before the flood and those who lived after it.
Before the flood, all the people stayed close together, so that very
many lived in one land, and no one lived in other lands. After the flood
families began to move from one place to another, seeking for themselves
new homes. Some went one way, and some another, so that as the number of
people grew, they covered much more of the earth than those who had
lived before the flood.

Part of the people went up to the north and built a city called Nineveh,
which became the ruling city of a great land called Assyria, whose
people were called Assyrians.

Another company went away to the west and settled by the great river
Nile, and founded the land of Egypt, with its strange temples and
pyramids, its sphinx and its monuments.

Another company wandered northwest until they came to the shore of the
great sea which they called the Mediterranean Sea. There they founded
the cities of Sidon and Tyre, where the people were sailors, sailing to
countries far away, and bringing home many things from other lands to
sell to the people of Babylon, and Assyria, and Egypt, and other
countries.

Among the many cities which the people built were two called Sodom and
Gomorrah. The people in these cities were very wicked and were nearly
all destroyed. One good man named Lot and his family escaped. There was
another good man named Abraham who did not live in these cities. He
tried to do God's will and was promised a son to bring joy into his
family.

After Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, Abraham moved his tent and his
camp away from that part of the land, and went to live near a place
called Gerar, in the southwest, not far from the Great Sea. And there at
last, the child whom God had promised to Abraham and Sarah, his wife,
was born, when Abraham, his father, was a very old man.

They named thi