Jesse Tree Update

I have not posted anything about our Jesse Tree in a few days. Here is what we have been reading about:

Abram was told to count the stars and told that his descendants would outnumber them.


God told Abraham to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. God provided a ram caught in the thicket


Jacob had a dream about a ladder stretching from Heaven to earth.


Jacob gave Joseph a tunic of amny colors. Joseph had a dream about eleven stars, the sun and moon bowing to him. (Mark was the odd ball who painted the picture)


Moses was called by God from the burning bush


God spared the first-born of each Israelite household when He saw the blood of Passover lamb on the door of the house.

We watched the movie Joseph, King of Dreams and talked about the differences between it and the real Bible story. The boys also talked about the differences in it and Little Joe (Veggie Tales movie)

My Family's Creativity

I know you might be getting bored with my Jesse Tree posts. Bear with me, ok. I am really getting impressed with my family's ornaments. We read about Noah. For our ornament tonight we did not use a pattern or template. Just handed everyone some paper, popsicle sticks, and paint. Here are the results:


No two of them look the same.

Benjamin's favorite part of the story is the rainbow. He gets scared of rain very easily, so maybe the rainbow comforts him.


Samuel painted his black because Noah spread pitch over the ark. So he said the real ark should be "pitch dark".


Nathaniel made this, then made another ark that is three-dimensional.


This was mine. Yes, I know it is not the most Biblically accurate model ever made, but I was going for cuteness.


This is Mark's. I am so impressed. He has never really been the sit around and make things type of guy, but he has been really putting forth some effort for the tree. Check this out-it is 3-D, and he went more for accuracy than cuteness.


Samuel striking a pose by the tree.

How Do You Like Them Apples???

We made new ornaments last night for our Jesse Tree. Our Bible reading was the fall of man. Don't you wonder sometimes why God ever bothered to create humans? I do not mean to be disrespectful. All I am saying is that all of creation obeys the commands given to them. Except for us.

It always strikes me as so significant when reading this that they were told they do lots of things: Be fruitful and multiply (don't you wonder how that was BEFORE the punishment of painful childbirth???), rule over the animals, eat anything except that fruit. They walked WITH God!!! But a crafty serpent comes along.... and who do they listen to??? The serpent!!! Wow! Who in their right mind would do such a thing?? I would never go along with someone who tried to get me to go against God. Oh, wait a minute..... I do that. Sometimes there is not even a crafty serpent leading me astray. I choose to do things, like be in front of the computer instead of reading my Bible. Or maybe I read my Bible, but then do not apply what it says. Maybe I am just proud. I think to myself, oh I would never do that when I hear about someone else's fall. (Sometimes as I am falling) I am especially judgmental against unruly kids. I think, "if they were better parents, their kids would not be little maniacs". OK, sometimes that is true, but it is just as true that my kids are not perfect well-behaved little angels all the time. They are flawed just like the rest of us.

Something struck me as significant in two of the ornaments. Look closely at Samuel's:

Ok, I know he is a happy go lucky five year old who would draw a smile on Hitler. But seeing a smile on the face of sin made me really think. How many times do we (I) see something that we know is not good, but we go along with it anyway. We say, oh it is not that bad. Think about this: how many times at Halloween do we see kids dressed as "good" witches? How often, at Valentine's Day especially, do we see "cute little devils"? We add cuteness and tolerance to things that God considers abominations. Which brings to my original question of why did God create us again?

Now take a look at Nathaniel's picture:

He did not add any kind of face at all to his snake. The anonymous sin. The Bible tells us that few are believers. The Barna Research group with all of their polls tells us the same thing. If we really open up our eyes and see the way that people carry themselves we would see that the majority of the people in the world are going to go to hell when they die. Do we care? I mean really care? When we see a thug on the street do we pray for that thug or just hold our purse a little tighter? When we see a teenager acting like a hoodlum do we intercede on behalf that teen or do we thank God that OUR kids don't act like that?? Do we think of these people as actual people, or just nameless faceless masses?

It can be very humbling to start examining myself about my own sins. Painful, too. I wonder why God created me. Why would He save me? Some things are just out of my league. I will never have the answers. I am ok with that, because I know that God DOES have all the answers.

OK, So Here's What Really Happened........

Like I said in my last post, which I posted yesterday morning, we always put out our Christmas decorations on the day after Thanksgiving. I also said that we were going to use our ginormous Christmas Tree as our Jesse Tree. Well, I did have good intentions. Things just did not happen that way. We had a few errands that needed doing yesterday. While out on our errands, in Birmingham, we decided to go to Gadsden. (Keep in mind that neither of those cities are very close to home) We ended up not getting home until very late. We got some good deals on books at a thrift store and found that the Gadsden Mall has a Books A Million. So the day was not a total bust. So, we put our stuff up today. After getting the tree up, the boys started looking through the ornaments. They would say, "Remember when I made this one?" or "Look, here's me as a Care Bear in a box!" or something that let us see that not putting up our Christmas ornaments was not going to work. So here is our Christmas tree:


We had to make a trip to Wal-Mart today (which was insane, more on that later) so we looked at trees for a small, cheap one. Bingo, 6ft Wesley Pine. (although I am not convinced that it is 6ft-I feel tall next to it in all my 5ft 2in glory.)

The reason going to Wal-Mart today was insane is this: Today was the biggest day of the year for many people in Alabama. The Iron Bowl. The day that Auburn and Alabama play each other in football. Almost everyone in Wal-Mart was showing their team colors. The place was packed with people getting their last-minute things for their Iron Bowl parties. And there was us getting a tree, coats, and paint. Our family always gets strange looks whenever we show "school spirit". You see, we are a house divided. 3 Bama fans verses 2 Auburn fans. For the past 6 years Benjamin and I have had bragging rights. Our team has won. (That would be Auburn in case you do not know) Our team has kind of stunk this year. So we knew going in that it might be bad. We had no idea that it would be 36 to zero bad. Poor Tommy Tuberville. As head coach of Auburn his job has been talked about this season. Never mind that he has been a winning coach every other season that he has been there. This year has been rough, so there are people shouting "Fire him!". Anyway, here are the guys enjoying some peanuts during the game:

How funny to see Benjamin not matching the rest of the crew ;}

So, after the game we finally got to start on our Jesse Tree. Mark read the story of creation to everyone and then the real fun began. We created ornaments out of salt dough.

Nathaniel made the earth, geographically correct, of course


Mark made a man (I am still in shock that he made an ornament. He is not usually the crafty kind of guy)


I made the earth, sun, and moon as seen from space


Benjamin made the sun (with sun spots and prominences)


Samuel made the earth ( I am not sure why the red lines. He said that it was supposed to be the equator and Hawaii. Maybe it is red because it's hot there?)


Altogether side by side