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The ornaments to print out for the Jesse Tree
Understanding the Jesse Tree
 

Wednesday of the First Week of Advent
Noah and the Ark and Rainbow
Gen 9:8-17 (NRSV)

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him,  “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.  I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”  God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

With Noah, we see that God establishes covenants with us.  A covenant is not like a contract where people are bound until they each fulfill their side and once the obligations are fulfilled, each party is freed from the contract.  A covenant is of the same genre as a contract in that each speaks of the obligations and duties of the parties that are brought together, however, the tie that binds them is love.  We say that there is a marriage covenant and along with it comes mutual expectations.  The impetus for the covenant is not selfish gain but mutual love for each other.  In our salvation history, God offers these types of covenants with humanity over and over again hoping that we would keep our end of the relationship by loving God as He has loved us.  Failing time and again to fulfill our end to be faithful to God, He came as a human being to do it for us.  Jesus came at Christmas to establish the new and everlasting covenant, the Eucharist, in which He remains faithful to the end for us and forgives our failings in our call to love.  This hopefully leads us to great gratitude for the gift of the incarnation.
 

The world kept growing, and growing, and growing, and people kept sinning so God needed to deal with the sin of the people again. He decided that He would send a flood to destroy the earth and start over, but would save some of the animals, and some of the people. Noah was the man God chose to save, along with his family, and some of every kind of animal. They all lived with Noah in an ark (a very large boat) while God caused rain to fall and waters to rise. By saving Noah and his family God would continue His plan to bring the Savior, Jesus. The ark reminds us that while God cannot ignore sin, He is always making a way to save us from it.
 

Talk to your family about the need to know what is good and what is bad in this world and that there are some things that are bad in this world that can hurt us.  Together talk about things in this world that are important to stay away from and to work at removing these things that are bad in our lives.  End with how God sent Jesus to help us to know these things and how important it is to listen to him.