We're off a Boat!

[Genesis 8:1]
I know it's not what the word literally means there, but it's funny that it says God remembered Noah. I imagine God up in Heaven playing Catan with the Godhead thinking "Ah, it's good to be rid of that Earth thing and be able to just chill with Us again, isn't it?" when an angel knocks on the door and says "Um...Lord...we were just wondering when Noah was going to-"
and God goes "CRAP!" and rushes out to take care of Noah.
Totally not what happened, but it's amusing.

[8:2-12]
The waters recede, the ark rests on a mountain, and Noah sends out test birds to see when it's safe to go back down. The dove bringing back and olive leaf/branch told Noah that the waters were starting to drain, and the dove not coming back at all meant it was safe to come down.
All this time Noah and his family had been scraping by an event that literally killed everyone but them. I imagine that every time that dove went out, it was fairly stressful waiting for it to come back. Even though they had survived the flood itself, they weren't out of the woods until they could go back down. I'm sure they were worrying if they'd have enough food to last until they could start growing things again. I'm sure they worried that the damage done was permanent and that they had survived the flood only to die on a barren, soggy rock. But the dove eventually got back good news, and I'm sure that olive branch was the biggest relief they'd had the whole trip, and that it gave them the strength to wait the extra few days it took for the water to recede the rest of the way.
When you're going through trouble, even if people are failing all around you, know that if you're walking in the protection of God, that you can make it. Just keep persevering, because eventually you'll see the olive branch that will tell you "help is on the way."

[8:13]
Noah had not even looked out until the dove didn't come back. He had sent the dove out through a window, but he had never opened the door and looked himself. He didn't trust his own eyes to be the judge of how good or bad the situation was, because looking out at the still half-flooded, destroyed world beneath him would have killed the morale of him and his family and they would have succumbed to despair, just like Peter walked on water just fine until he started looking at the storm around him. Instead he sent out the dove, and trusted the message the dove brought back, believing that God said that he would be spared.
Don't waste your time looking at the situation around you just to judge how much trouble you're in. Get all the information you need to do the job you've been given, but don't waste time worrying about what could go wrong. Trust what God tells you.

[8:14-20]
And God gives the go-ahead to get out of the ark and start the reconstruction effort. The longest road trip in the world was over. Noah's first act before beginning the task was to offer a sacrifice with the clean animals he brought along.
Bring glory to God when He gives you victories.

[8:21-22]
To top it all off, God promises that He'll never destroy the world quite like this again. He acknowledges that man's heart is evil, but He's not going to do this again and He also put restrictions on ground-cursing as a punishment method. Because this was the plan. The only kind of human God could have a meaningful relationship with was the kind that had the propensity for evil. This event marked how God was capable of and how man was deserving of absolute destruction. This is so we can see exactly what our sin deserves and exactly how wonderful it is that Jesus is now our righteousness instead of us having to depend on our own, because there would be some flooding pretty soon otherwise.
This verse is also how Texas gets away with not having Spring and Fall, because God only made Winter and Summer mandatory.