It's the weekend!

Good morning, it's the weekend!

On a weekend we continue to have a DAILY FOCUS for each day. 

On Saturday it's Family Fun Day, the day to spend time with your immediate or extended family.  Visiting, maybe meeting up for a walk or a picnic or day out at a venue.

It's that time of year when there are Pick Your Own farms doing autumn themed activities like pu,pkin carving, there are Guy Fawkes bonfires and firework events and we are also approaching the season for Christmas markets. 

Why not start looking at posters and getting them in your calendar.

Then Sunday is Renew Your Spirit Day or Rest & Recharge Day.

Maybe you attend church, our family does.  It's great to worship our creator God, thank him for a blessed week and renew your spirit for the next one.  

We also love coffee and cake after, a chance to catch up with friends we would never otherwise have known except through this church family.

This is a lovely church near us dating back to 675AD.

We also have a lunch (as opposed to dinner in the evening) which is often followed by a walk if the weather is good.  If it's not, then it's a chance to get together and play games or watch a film.  When it's grotty outside, there's nothing like a game of monopoly alongside a cup of tea and maybe some scones!  Or cake!

Whatever you do with your weekend, I pray it is relaxing, renewing, fun and full of happy memories of family, good food and days out.

Let me know in the comments what you do.

See you Monday!

Nora

xxx

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

A new book....

 ...and not one I EVER thought would prompt me to put pen to paper!

It all started when a friend gave me a bag of books to take to the charity shop for her and said that I could take a look and if there was anything I wanted, to take it.  OK.  Thanks very much!

I had a look through, there were some gardening books, a beautiful Concordance Bible and....a huge book of women's stories that I thought I would take a better look at.  And I am so thankful I did!

Inside were 5 stories, re-written in a more contemporary way about 5 strong women of the Bible, and one of them was my favourite Ruth.

Knowing the 'Love Story' of Ruth, a sort of Cinderella story, I was looking forward to the other 4 stories too.

Well, I read them all.  How wonderful they were.  Well written and thought provoking.  Each section ended with a set of questions, a bit like a Book Club might ask, you know....what did you think of this character, did what happen surprise you, how could it have ended differently.... you know what I mean!

Well, in essence, this book was a book of Bible stories and the review questions were Bible studies.

It was so good I ordered the book of 5 stories about men in the Bible!

And this is what I'm reading at the moment.

Reading that first book was a pinnacle moment.

It lead me to watch a sermon on TV which got me searching for a book to help with my anxiety called 'Be Anxious for Nothing' and this was linked to another called 'Battlefield of the Mind'.

And these in turn got me thinking about my bookshelf and some books I had that I could revisit.  When I was studying for my health sciences degree I was recommended a book by Lee Strobel, all scientific studies...all faith based.  In fact he has written at least 3 in the same format, all undertaken to disprove the person of Jesus, disprove Creation over Evolution and to question faith.  Science and Faith?  Well, I challenge anyone to read these and not think more deeply about the scientific findings within.

So began my journey to rekindle a belief that took root as a child, but had never been developed because I didn't know how.  Now I know more, I am excited. In this hurting world, it calms and thrills me that, irrespective of faith, we can read a book that gives us good advice and live a better, more considerate, more loving life that not only makes us happier but can be used to bring happiness to others too.

Until next time, 

Toodle-ooo!

Nora xxx