I am not going to go to school and get another degree.  I am not going to get a job.  I am not going to learn to knit, crochet, tat, or any other finger work exercise.  I am not going to have any more children.  All of that is behind me.  Now, I live in the moment and it is very good.  I don't have to worry about all that stuff.  I get up, ask myself what I would like to do today, and make a choice to do, or not to do.

I admit that a few years ago, I did go back to college and take Italian.  Two courses.  It did me no good.  I can't even remember how to say the numbers one through ten.  I was on my way to Italy and thought it might be good to say a few words that made sense.  It wasn't.  I couldn't apply anything I had learned to real life.

Life is like having a quart jar full of pennies.  You spend them one by one, drop a few and don't even bother to lean over and pick them up.  Then one day you look at your jar and there aren't a lot of pennies left.  How are you going to spend them?  You wish you hadn't wasted so many of them.

Proverbs 3: 1-2 "...don't forget my laws.  Let your heart keep my commandments.  For length of days, and long life, and peace shall those laws add unto you."

I can truly testify that those are true words.

I've lived past my three score and ten.  It's been good.  I am enjoying the pennies that are left.  I love writing to you.

The conversation that I have been having with you about Paradise, Eden and the Tree of Life, are the type of conversations I was raised with.  Every Sunday, all the family--at least ten of us--ate Sunday dinner at my Mom's house.  And since all of the Adults were Bible teachers at our church, they would talk about what had come up in class.  Sometimes there were answers, sometimes only questions.

The path to salvation had long been settled:  Jesus is our Tree of Life.  He is the way--the only way--to God.  There is one sacrifice.  He was it.  Awaited as the Messiah--the Lamb of God--in the Old Testament.  The faithful were held in Paradise until his death and resurrection, and then freed to be with him forevermore.  They were saved by faith.  We are saved by faith. They looked forward, we look backwards to God's sacrificial Lamb, Jesus.  My family were Bible scholars and I was mentally saturated in Scripture all of my life.  As a result, I wonder and ponder  about the side issues such as:  Baptism can't save you or the thief on the cross couldn't had gone to Paradise--and Jesus said he did. "This day will you be with me in Paradise."   Jesus was baptized and he surely didn't need salvation.  But it is required as an act of obedience.  It identifies us as Children of God.

And good works can't save you--although they are a certain sign that Jesus is Lord of your life.  There is no way that Jesus can live in your life and you can willingly, willfully do those things that cause Him pain.  That's not what love is about.  We obey.  Loving children obey.  And when we mess up, we immediately talk it over with God and ask forgiveness.  And we don't keep doing the same sin over and over.  That makes no sense.  How can I love someone and purposefully cause them pain.

The conversations at the kitchen table on Sunday were about "Fine-tuning" concepts in Scripture.  Some questions couldn't be answered, but my elders never argued, they just pondered.  It was an unusual upbringing for a kid.  But the blessing is mine.  The things that are "knowable" by study of Scripture, I know.  The things that aren't knowable, I ponder.  I have a million questions to ask when I get to heaven.

As long as I am writing about Paradise, I may as well finish what I am thinking.  In Gen. 2:9 God placed the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden.  In Gen. 3: 24, he set Cherubims and a flaming sword to "keep the way of the Tree of Life" so that people wouldn't have access to it any more.  That's where the story of the tree of life begins.  In Eden.

It ends in the last book of the Bible.  In Revelation 2: 7  John writes (He is exiled on the Isle of Patmos) "To him that overcomes, I will give to eat of the Tree of Life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God.

So the tree was in Eden.  And it will be in Paradise as well.  Since there is one tree,  I think that maybe Eden and Paradise are probably the same place. Perhaps we get to go back there.  In the very last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 22:1-2  John writes, "And he showed me a pure river of water of life...proceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb.  In the midst of the street of it, on on either side of the river, there was the Tree of Life, which bare twelve manner of fruits...for the healing of the nations."

He continues in vs. 14, "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the Tree of Life, and may enter in through the gates into the city."  The kingdom of God.

There is a city.  And there is a garden, and a river.  And there is a tree with twelve fruits.  The word Paradise means garden.  Eden was a garden.

That's all I have to say about that.  One thing that I am really thankful for is that the Bible says we are going to eat fruit.  That makes me very happy.  I love to eat.  Heaven will be wonderful.

I have written over six hundred posts.  I have always written about something that I know for sure--concerning the Biblical accounts.

But yesterday, I wrote about Paradise.  There are some things that aren't spelled out for us, and this is one of those things.  It is a place, but is is heaven?  Or as the Old Testament seems to suggest, is it the place where the faithful went when they died.  They had to wait for the Messiah to come, to die, to be resurrected, and pay the price for sin.  Permanently.  Up to then, their sacrifices lasted a year, then had to be paid again.  Over and over.

When Jesus rose from the dead, he said to Mary, "Don't touch me.  I've not yet ascended (to heaven) to the Father." John 20:17.  Where had he been for the last three days after he died???!!!  I think it was in Paradise.  He told the thief on the cross, "This day shall you be with me in Paradise."  Three days later, he ascended to heaven to make the blood payment for our sin.

When he died, the temple veil was torn in two, signifying that now, we can come into the "Holy of Holies where God is."  The sacrifice was made.

I have always contended that He told Mary not to touch him because he had yet to spread his sacrificial blood on the mercy seat.  The Old Testament is replete with references to the mercy seat and the temple had a mercy seat.  But after the price for our sins was paid, he returned to earth and appeared to many.  And He told Thomas, "Put your hand in the hole in my side, put your finger in the hole in my hand."  In other words, touch me.  It was finished.

Deep.  Maybe I will go back to writing about something that I know for sure.

God then curses the serpent, Eve and Adam--in that order.  The beautiful serpent is damned to crawl on its belly.  Eve will have pain and suffering in childbirth and her husband will be her ruler.  And Adam will have to till the ground--which will be cursed.  Thorns and thistles will grow in his crops.  And instead of God providing Adam's food in the garden of Eden, Adam will have to "sweat" to provide for his family, all the days of his life.  They had it perfect, and blew it.  All they had to do--up to then--was pick fruit and eat it.  Now--after they disobeyed--they are going to be cast out of the garden and have to work for a living.  Obedience is critical to God.

Every time I pull a weed, I can thank Adam for it.   I sure don't plant them.  And left to itself, my garden would be full of weeds.  They are a dominant species.  Everything else has to have attention to produce or bloom.  Not weeds.  They take over if you don't pull them out.  They cause work for us.  You can definitely see the parallel between sin and weeds.

The discussion on Sunday was a question:  Was Eden Paradise?  When the Bible talks about Paradise, it usually is a place you go after death.  In the Old Testament, it was on one side of a huge gulf that separated the faithful from the unfaithful.  Those being "held" until Christ paid the penalty for sin.  And those being held for judgment.  The story of Lazarus is a good example.

Luke 16:19 tells us about Lazarus, a beggar laid at the gate of a rich man.  He hoped for crumbs the Bible says.  They both died.  Lazarus went to the bosom of Abraham, and the rich man was in torment for his sins.  He cried across "a great gulf" to Abraham to have mercy on him.   But it was too late.  Then he asked that someone to be sent back to warn his brothers.  Abraham said, "If they won't hear Moses...neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.

In Revelation, John tells us about Paradise and and says that the "Tree of Life is there."  In the gospels, Jesus says to the thief on the cross, "This day you will be with me in Paradise."  But three days later, Jesus says, "Don't touch me, I have not yet ascended to (heaven) my Father."  So Paradise seems to be somewhere besides heaven?  That is, up till the resurrection.  Then the saints went to heaven.  I'm out in the boonies here.  Just thinking out loud.

All this work on the new house has totally messed up my gardening.  My daughter called to say that the morel mushrooms were ready to be picked and I didn't even make it to her house.   Last year, we went down to the back of her farm where there were trees that had fallen and decayed.  That's where the morels grow.  I got so many ticks that the doc had to dig them out of my arms.  The next time I go picking morels, I'll use Deet!

I keep thinking I will dig up the asparagus plants and transplant them, but I'm not strong enough to dig deep enough to get them.  It seems a shame since you can't pick the spears until the third year.  I hate to have to start all over again.  My plants are at least six years old and producing prolifically.

I don't know why I care about asparagus anyway.  I gave it all away last year.  Didn't eat a bite of it.  And so far, I have given it away this year as well.  I keep meaning to eat some, but I don't.  The morels are another thing altogether.  They only come up for a week to ten days and then they are gone.  They are so delicious.  Next year...

I've been teaching my class from the book of Genesis.  We got to chapter three where God asks Adam  three questions.  "Where are you."  "Who told you you were naked?"  and "Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you that you should not eat?"  To which Adam replied, "The woman that you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree, and I ate it."  In other words, it was Eve's fault.  But primarily Adam was saying that it was God's fault because God gave the woman to him.

Put the blame on someone else.  Take no responsibility for what you have done.  As a result, you don't need to repent because what you did was someone else's fault.  And without repentance--true "I won't do that again" repentance--there can be no forgiveness.  The best way to live a life before God is to come clean about everything.  Every thing.  God knows anyway.  Isaiah said that God won't hear you when you pray if you have dirt on your soul.  I want to be sure God hears me.

One summer, Ken and I drove south to New Orleans.  A carrier he had operated off of was docked and we went aboard.  We walked to the front of the carrier's landing strip and looked over the edge.  There were dents in the front and on the edge of the ramp.  "That's Mack.  Right there, that's Burt...they didn't do what I told them to do."

When a pilot comes in low, the LSO uses his paddles to give him a "wave off".  Sometimes the pilot thinks he knows better than the LSO and keeps coming.  But the ship is in a valley--it looks like it is a long way below--but as he the pilot approaches, the front of the ship begins to rise back up and the pilot can't escape hitting the end of the ramp.

Life is like that.  We are positive that we know what we are doing.  That our way of thinking is better than God's way of thinking.  And before it is all over, we crash and burn.  You would think that we could benefit from the mistakes that others make.  But obviously, guys hit the ramp over and over.  They believe in their own abilities rather than the expertise of the LSO.

"It doesn't matter how many touch and goes you make on land, nothing can prepare you for a rolling, pitching deck,"  Ken said.  "You absolutely have to trust the LSO."

When landing lights replaced the LSO, you would think that nobody would ever hit the ramp again.  But they do.  Experienced, talented, intelligent people make the same mistakes over and over again.  They don't believe it when the yellow and red lights on the carrier deck are flashing.

That's why our car insurance rates are so high.  That's why military aviator's life insurance is so high.

Jeremiah 7:23 "But this thing I commanded them saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people: and walk in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you."