Origins of the Messiah

In his last words Jacob prophesied that a king would arise from the tribe of Judah:
Judah is like a lion... Judah will hold the royal scepter and his descendants will always rule. Nations will bring him tribute and bow in obedience before him.
Genesis 49:10

The king would come from the line of Jesse of the tribe of Judah. God told David, son of Jesse, I will make one of your sons king and will make his kingdom strong... I will make sure that his dynasty continues forever.

1 Chronicles 17:11

This king would arise after it seemed that the royal line had been cut off:

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him...

Isaiah 11:1, 2

Advent

In December I'd like to blog the Old Testament prophecies about the coming of Jesus. I'll add more as the month progresses. Let's start at the beginning...
The first promise of the Saviour came immediately after the first man and woman caved in to the serpent's temptation to disobey God. God promised that a descendant of Eve would crush the serpent, but be hurt in the process.

God said to the serpent: I will make you and the woman hate each other; her offspring and yours will always be enemies. Her offspring will crush your head, and you will bite their heel. Genesis 3:15

God's promise to Abraham: I will give you many descendants and they will become a great nation. I will bless you and make your name famous, so that you will be a blessing... and through you I will bless all nations. Genesis 12:2, 3

Love those oats!

I set out some oats to decorate the deck and the birds just love them.

Winter

Winter's here. Yesterday was our first big snowfall. The downside is that Diane and Gordie and Sandi, Jon and Magan were all going to come for lunch, but the roads were bad so they didn't come. We were all disappointed.

The upside is that it looks pretty and it brought the birds out. This is my "bird corner" and they seem to be enjoying it. There have been 7 or 8 using the feeder at once. Now I just need to attract the chickadees. I've put out sunflowers and suet so we'll see what happens.

Home cooking

Hey, we're heavy into the home cookin'. We bought a yogurt maker in October and went through the yogurt so fast we wanted to make double batches. I went online and discovered you can make it in a variety of ways, so now we're also making it in our electric frying pan. Turns out great!
Joanna wanted to make cabbage rolls, which I hadn't made for about 20 years, but we made them and they turned out good. I've got some in the freezer for whoever shows up at the door first!

What is it?

We were driving home late last night when we saw these strange things in the sky. A wierd light was coming from them and they moved incredibly fast in the night sky. The first one approached us so quickly I was terrified. There were all kinds of colored panels in the centre and a kind of mist was rising from it.

Well, the mist is the clue. It's actually a decorative mister sitting on our fireplace. I did a little editing and a little lying...

Autumn Gold

Looking at our subdivision from the field across the road.

A maze of paths has been cut into the field which you can't see from the road.

We didn't notice them until this week, and we've really enjoyed walking on the paths.