background...
After
forming the Ardarm from the soil of the Ardarmah (ground) and his own breath,
then after planting a garden (East, in Eden) with all kinds of beautiful trees
to produce good fruit, and putting the Ardarm in it, and after naming two trees in the middle of his garden, God says that
the way forward for the Ardarm in Eden, was “You may eat the fruit of any tree
in the garden, except The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” God went on to say, “You must NOT EAT the
fruit from that tree- for in the day
that you eat of it you shall surely die”[1].
Later,
Snakey says “That is a lie! You won’t surely die!” In fact, (though he doesn’t
command it straightforwardly, he sows doubt into Eve’s mind about the character
and motives of the previous commander, with the view to tempting her to eat it,
to get the knowledge of Good & Evil that it will supposedly give to them -
when Eve & Adam EAT the fruit. Then, to compound things, it looked like when they do eat the fruit,
that they DON’T DIE - in that day! [it seems to me that God wasn’t talking about the death of their biological
life (bios) which came along years later]
But
the whole sad story - after Genesis 3 shows something dead, lost, purposeless,
stinking , rotten about humanity. We are “The living Dead”, zombies who are
born, & move, grow old, have kids, do work to maintain the system (or work
against it, to make another system basically the same) then die &
perpetuate the cycle.. (of “life(bios)”). And, Jesus later says, “I tell you the
truth (not like snakey), the time is coming, - the time has now come- when the
dead will hear the voice of the son of God, & come to Life(zoe).”
Another thing from the bible... Israel is a tree planted by God in his garden. It
is a “vine/olive-tree/fig-tree”, the planting of the Lord, meant to bear fruit
for it’s gardener to eat. (Am I pushing it too far when I wonder whether it Is
meant to be a tree to bring the knowledge of good & evil somehow to the
onlookers or even non-partakers, & also wonder whether, in this new garden
of God, it is meant to be a tree of
life to the nations?)
One
more thing from life... two nights ago we had some mind-games/riddles on the
way home from the Teen Camp. Jayden Sweeting told us one that was simple
enough, but we all gave up before we
got it (We might have got it if we had acted it out concretely?). But solving
it hinged on information gained not only from what happens, but also from what doesn’t
happen in the scenario:
That,
& the stories above that I had spoken of in class, alerted me to another
level of story the next day, when I was reading or thinking about Jesus - on
his way one morning to clean out the rotting “thieves’ den” of a temple[2] & then also the next morning going back to the same
place[3].
And,
since then, I've also been reminded of a story from Israel's history; as they
learned to be ordered as the people of God to serve the Nations and be a
blessing to them... there was a time when the leaders quibbled over the
power/authority and the spiritual leadership of God's people and (maybe a bit
like snakey) didn't want to have God's choice of leaders (Moses or Aaron)
"over them". Aaron and his descendants were given the priesthood via
a sign from God: his dry stick of a staff/rod being miraculously given buds
(and flowers, and fruit) overnight.
Ardarm’s Fruit-tree
“..in
the day you eat of it, you will surely die.”
came
the words to the first pair from the One On High.
Leader,
he - named that tree, then[4], to let children know,
And
o-nly one more tree was named by Father God,
and
we’ll see what’ll be the upshot of his nod,
his
ok, to today go and find you’ve eaten[6]
fruit
from The LIVING Tree that grows in God’s Eden.
Later
on, when second Ar-darm came to get
fruit
from
fruit-tree, lovingly plan-ted in his
“youth”;
poet
he, used that tree then to let children know:
Ardarm
came, to it’s “shame” the fruit-tree’s fruit dain’t grow!
And
the Fa-ther must ’a said something “like”
back then
“..in
the day you don’t eat
of it, that tree ‘has been’!”
'cause
sure e-nough when Pe-ter next day saw that tree
that
there stood, “Aaron’s Rod”, had no buds to be seen
