Tree of Knowledge & Tree of Life...there are 2 trees!!

How many times have I read the book of Genesis, chapter 3...and therefore how many times have I missed this previously!!

Doh!  (note to self...take more notice!)

My reading for the day was The Fall of Man...

...and I had a lightbulb moment (that's Nora speak for 'the Holy Spirit revealed this to me').  

I started studying around this subject...boy, some of it was like wading uphill, through treacle in flip-flops!  But I think I got there and will now try to explain it in simple terms .... mostly for myself because I know I will read it again in the future and question it.  In fact I have written out 2 post-it notes and stuck them to the relevant chapters in my Bible.

So first we know that God created Adam & Eve.  They are created in God's image meaning that they have good characteristics and abilities with access to the Tree of Life.  If they love God and do as He asks, they will live forever (but this isn't a dictatorship so they do have freewill).

So ....  the snake tempts Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil, which she does, she then gives it to Adam and they become wise.  They understand that they are naked and their desire to cover up comes to the notice of God.  He then knows what they have done and has a problem.

What God created has now become 'equal' in terms of knowing good and evil and knows that this won't work, in fact now that they are 'spoiled' it could be dangerous for the future if they are allowed to live forever.

He has to punish them (this is the first judgement of sin) and he also has to prevent the chaos their wrongdoing will cause by preventing them from living forever (making them mortal) and so sends them out of the Garden of Eden which prevents them access to the Tree of Life.

This is the lightbulb moment when I realised that Adam & Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge and then God sent them out of the Garden of Eden so that they couldn't eat from the Tree of Life.... yes, 2 trees.

One that leads to eternal life with all the goodness of God and the other which reveals all the opposites or the absence of all the good things  (because where you create love, the absence of love is hate, where you create good, the absence of good is evil, where you create humility the absence of humility is pride...and so on!)

I thought this picture showed it well.....  

So now Adam & Eve cannot eat from the Tree of Life (and nor can the rest of humanity), this makes death inevitable and, wonderfully,  resurrection possible, so by doing this God creates a means to save mankind.

A great example of God bringing Good from evil.

So that is what the whole Bible is about really.  God wanting us in the Garden of Eden with him, us messing it up and God finding a way to ...well.... get round the problem!

We have free will (remember, it is not a dictatorship) and we can choose God's way or Satan's way....just so you know, this is not something we can sit on the fence about!

We choose God's way through choosing Jesus Christ or we don't choose Jesus Christ and by default we have chosen Satan's way.

If like me you never realised there were 2 trees, or you did but didn't understand then I hope this helps.  I'm not saying this is an high brow, intellectual answer - that's for you to study further if you wish.  It is just my clarification for my own notes which I thought might help someone else.

I hope to return soon to share some more eye-opening (Spirit-lead) stuff, in the meantime....

God Bless

Nora

xxx

Before...

 That's it really....a 'Before' photo with the hope that it guilts me into getting started on a decorating project or 2!

We have lived in this house since Oct 2018 and in the first year we were finding our feet and learning what plants were in the garden and which we could move to grow veg plus and endless round of visitors!

We then shut up shop for winter except for Father-in-Laws visit for Christmas and then, of course, the pandemic started!

We could have decorated then I suppose, but the weather was so lovely and for us, life was quite normal because, we live quite a slow, remote life here, but also Missy still had school as she was in that transition year from 6 to 7 that only didn't attend school for about 2 months.

Anyway, we didn't decorate, we cleaned, sorted and really kept on top of the garden.  We thought we might decorate during the winter when we have to be indoors...but that didn't really work out as we tend to get a bit down and our motivation for such things, and in poor light, deserted us!

So here we are back in May 2021 with not a paint splash of decorating done and a house that is perfectly presentable, but starting to need a little TLC.

So that plan this year is to re-vamp the kitchen...we're thinking cream cupboards and woodwork and pale pink walls...yes, hubby suggested that!  So I'm all go with that as I'd been holding back on that suggestion.

So here are the 'before' shots of the kitchen / diner....

 

A little more info on that is.... we quite fancy copper or rose gold accessories and handles, no this doesn't involve a trip to landfill, but instead a can of copper spray paint to transform handles, utensil pots, frames etc.  And we'll also be sanding down and varnishing the floor and taking a look at soft furnishing...mostly from fabric out of my stash or the charity shop....or maybe dyed. 

Next up is mine and Hubby's bedroom, we're going soft cream or pale peach, probably with cream woodwork....we may well go the whole hog with a new carpet, but it depends....if the floorboards are nice, we might go with sanding and varnishing those...we'll have to see...

So...there we have it!  I've put it out there and now there is no escaping the fact that I have said it... hoping it motivates me and in a few months I will be able to show you at least ONE room!

Hey-ho and Toodle-ooo!

Nora

xxx

Scrappy cloths

Since we moved to the North Pennines, and since Missy watched an offering from the wonderful Sir David Attenborough which left her in tears and determined to lighten our footprint on the planet, we have been on a mission! 

We started small and are getting better at cutting down on plastic, reducing the rubbish we send to landfill, buying all that we can second hand, finding ways to use what we have until the end of it’s life and above all being inventive!

Of course, with a child, clothes are something parents seem to buy lots of!  They grow so quickly!  Missy is the 5^th of 5 children, but the youngest of the older 4 is a girl, but 10 years older than her, so there aren’t too many hand-me-downs.

We don’t go mad with a full school uniform for every day, but clearly you have to have one spare set!  And it all gets a good deal of use.  So, by the time the school year ends, the sweatshirts and trousers are usually OK to pass on, but the shirts are pretty grim!  Paint, lunch, biros and grass stains take their toll.

So, what can we do with them?

Well Missy had 3 pretty polo shirts that I held on to wondering how they could be repurposed and then the lightbulb came on in 3 ways….

1 – they have pretty buttons that can be reused.

2 – from the underarm to the hem, they are square

3 – there is an amount of ‘scrap’

I cut the side seams off, cut horizontally across the chest from underarm to underarm and removed the buttons.

 

The buttons went into my button box.

The 2 squares from each body of the shirts was overlocked around the edge to make cleaning or spills cloths (instead of paper towel) and all the ‘scrap’ including that created by overlocking will be joining my ‘stuffing’.

‘Stuffing’ is all the offcuts of fabric and threads from projects that are too small to even use on patchwork and they go into an offcuts bag kept at the side of your workstation. 

Many dressmakers are now employing the ‘Make do and Mend’ ethos of their Granny and making a stuffing bag which is simply 2 squares of scrap fabric (or old sheets or curtain, hubbys shirts etc), seamed on 3 sides to make a pouch and into that putting waste.  When full it can be used as a cushion pad, or smaller clumps of the waste can be used to stuff doorstops, draught excluders, toys…..the options are endless.  I often find I have more projects than stuffing….and nothing to put into landfill!!

Mine swallows up offcuts from cutting patterns out of fabric, threads, selvedges, the ‘trim’ from using the overlocker…..and more recently laddered tights AND….yes, you know whats coming…the chopped up scraps from those school polo shirts!

I’ve recently got back into knitting and apart from keeping a small ball of the yarn (with the ball band) for repairs, all the offcuts from sewing up my projects will be heading for my stuffing bag!

So, there we are…..cleaning cloths, buttons and stuffing!  No waste!

I have to say that I have become ridiculously excited when I find a new use for things and can keep my bin free of unnecessary waste.  Things in this house get used, used and used.....if they are made of natural materials, they may find themselves added to the compost heap....or like a rather dodgy looking wooden spoon, used for lighting the fire!!

Let me know what new and inventive ways you have found to reduce your reliance on landfill and take responsibility for your waste.

See you very soon,

Toodle-ooo

Nora

xx