The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil …

Read Time:6 Minute, 4 Second

Reflection on Saturday, 2nd week of Advent, year C2

When we see the tragic scene of the expulsion of our ancestors from the garden, where they led a peaceful and prosperous life in the presence of God himself, we feel sad, because it is a bit as if we were chased away. In addition, God set up his cherubim and fiery whirling sword to guard the way to the tree of life, which could become our eternal life if we only eat of the fruit of that tree. God did not want a man who tasted of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, breaking His commandment, to live forever. Rather, the time of life on earth was to become a time for man in which he would stop wanting to eat from the tree of death and would want to eat from the tree of life. Once upon a time I was very intrigued by this question, whether there was perhaps a tree and this sword and cherubs somewhere. Maybe they are somewhere on earth? However, as we know, we cannot see it with our human eyes.

I recently read a simple explanation of the bodily and spiritual vision. The author of the article showed that it is only the density of atoms that determines whether something is visible and something is not, and something with a low density of atoms permeates something with a dense structure. Perhaps it is just like the sounds. After all, we know that there are sounds that, for example, animals can hear and we don’t. There are even special whistles for dogs that only they can hear. The world around us is full of electromagnetic waves, these waves carry pictures, sounds, our phone calls, and we cannot see and hear all of this, so we need transmitters and receivers. We also know that there are tons of things that we will never see or hear, unless a human builds the appropriate devices to allow it.

People who survived psychosis with hallucinations, be it visual or auditory, has been experienced by an invisible world that is normally invisible and alien to us. However, when our brain is inflamed, it begins to perceive images and voices that we cannot understand or interpret, so let us include them among the products of a sick mind. However, in my opinion, it does not have to be that way. As I ponder this, a passage from the Word of God in 2 Kgs 6: 14-23 comes to mind. There we see Elisha and his servant. Elisha was helping the king of Israel by telling him what the king of Aram was going to do. God revealed these truths to him, and the Israelites avoided clash. The king of Aram became irritated with the prophet and ordered an attack on him. The servant saw the ambush in Dota, full of hostile troops. He saw with fleshly eyes and could not see what was real reality. At Elisha’s request, God opened his eyes and he saw a phenomenon that probably frightened him even more. Here “the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire around Elisha” (v. 17). It was this reality of God that allowed Elisha to do whatever he wanted with this army. The warriors went blind, and Elijah led them to the king of Israel, he fed them, and they departed, settling the robberies once and for all. The Arameans simply didn’t harass the Israelites anymore.

Walking in God’s reality is walking in the supernatural. It is entering into God’s presence, which when we live in a bodily way, is unattainable. Even for those born of God’s Spirit, experiencing the reality of heaven here on earth is difficult when they eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because this tree, as we know from the stories of Adam and Eve, gives birth to death. Living in death, we will live like this world, entangled in various sins, which we will want to fight in our own way, to no avail. We will be plagued by the religiosity, law and schematic nature of death. We need to approach and eat of the tree of life, as we see in many biblical accounts, but perhaps most clearly in Revelation 21, 2: they are used to heal nations. ” A similar picture is found in Ezekiel 47, 12, where the number of these trees is greater than one.

We know perfectly well that the giver of life is Jesus Christ, He is that tree of life – “I am the resurrection and I am eternal life …” (Jn 11: 25-26). Everyone who finds himself in him lives his life, which is eternal. To be in Him, when He is in us, is to be born of Him. By grace through faith. It is entering the Kingdom of God, getting closer to the tree of life and making use of it. As long as we live here, we know that we live in mortal bodies not only because they must die or be miraculously transformed during Parousia, but because sin resides in our bodies. And it is not our sin that is at stake, but sin as the one who gives birth to sins. The sin that Jesus overcame in the flesh – Rom 8: 1-6 – does not reign over us when God’s Spirit enlivens our mortal bodies (Rom 8:11). Thus, God’s eternal life can radiate not only within us, but also through us. And instead of feeding ourselves from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we want the tree of life, that is, Jesus.

God made our return to Eden possible, that in Christ we became His children and His property which He had bought back. Moreover, in earthly life the process of change begins at the time of being born again by God’s Spirit (not at the baptism of an infant) and continues throughout life. You can live life by living death, feeding on death, but we can also live life by life. Dying for myself, but living for the Lord. It is a more difficult path, because it is self-denial, but it is a path of changing what is mortal into what is eternal. Our spirit, filled with God’s Spirit, can be a carrier of life for our soul and body. Then we can also experience God’s miracles and transformations, but also those who are radiated by Christ in us can experience them.

Miracles and signs are then something natural, although they are as if a side effect of our life directed at the giver of life. So let us learn to use the tree of life to make us actually live.

All of this would not have happened had life not been born among the cattle in a little stable in little Bethlehem. This fragile life, which was defenseless in our eyes, and which God shielded with thousands of Angels, grew among us to show us himself, to show us all the solutions in our lives. All these solutions for our life is He, life. Jesus Christ.

Happy Christmas to the readers and creators of Theseus, in Mr. Kazik J.