God has been working to weave History in history for thousands of years and we’re uncovering more with each step. Thank you for the opportunity to join you for today’s Weekly encouragement! It is my delight to be with you as we lead up to Easter weekend! New things I see that I’ve not seen before are gifts to me in sharing the Weekly encouragement! I’m grateful for this as we uncover how the story that started in Genesis lined up to the story of the resurrection of Jesus. Sometimes life seems more worthwhile in the mess. Cherubim are important. There were two trees in the beginning, in the garden of Eden, that’s pretty messy. But wonderful! Because of Adam and Eve’s focus on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, this tree somewhat overshadows the tree that was what the story was supposed to be. The tree of Life! I might venture to say that if Adam and Eve had passed the test of obedience, that the tree of Life would have been the story?! “Did God really say?” is how we read the scripture in Genesis. But it was possibly more in the original language. One Hebrew scholar says the actual statement was more like this, “even if God says, ‘Don’t eat’, so what. Go ahead and eat it anyway”. It was more a test of obedience. And it turned out, Adam and Eve didn’t want to be with God, they wanted to be God. They didn’t want to live by God’s word, they wanted to have the last word. This is what took them from the garden of Eden. There remained the tree of Life in the middle of the garden of Eden. And now there was a problem. The tree of Life gave eternal life to their existence. Now that they had fallen short of the glory of God by wanting to be God rather to live by His word, if they were to eat of the tree of life, they would be forever separated and God did not want them to be forever separated by their own sin. Rather than a punishment to ban them from the garden of Eden, two cherubim were placed at the entry to the garden to protect them from eating of the tree of Life. The thread of the cherubim continues. It’s in the Jewish Torah, contained in our Bible in the Old Testament. Next is in Exodus of the Old Testament, where God instructs the children of Israel to construct the arc of the covenant and to place the stones of the Ten Commandments in it. The construction of the arc was to have two cherubim guarding the arc with the word from God, the Ten Commandments, inside. They were guarding the word. Just as the two cherubim guarded the entrance to the garden where the tree of Life grew in the middle. The third place in scripture where cherubim are found is in the New Testament. At the resurrection! Two angels? Not just any angels, there were two cherubim inside the empty tomb where Jesus had laid. Mary Magdalene was at the tomb, crying because she didn’t know where they had taken the body of Jesus. When she looks inside the tomb, she finds two cherubim, one where Jesus head had been and one where Jesus feet had been. And they tell her the story God had been wanting to tell from the beginning, from the garden of Eden. Jesus is alive! The Word is alive. We have access now again, as God planned from the beginning. A tremendous story that lights my heart on fire for Him again, for the Word of God. Who else orchestrates all these years to bring us to this place with Him?! May your Easter celebration be more full and fueled than ever before! Don’t take His Word lightly! It is eternal. He first loved us. It might look messy, but it is true and wild! I’m praying for you because I love you! Now we are to guard our hearts for from it flows the river of Life!