I am 33 weeks pregnant with you today. You move around so much more than I remember you big brother and sister moving. I love every minute of it. So many kicks and rolls and pushes. I haven't noticed any hiccups yet but I'm sure they are coming. Quinn and Sawyer love you so much and can't wait to meet you. Sawyer sometimes asks if you are coming today and then says "oh no, baby Olive is being born in June." They love to hug and kiss you through my belly. This pregnancy, second trimester on, has been so wonderful. I feel so blessed to have you growing inside of me. I can't wait to meet you and yet it's all going too fast. I want to soak up and embrace every moment of your movement, every growing curve of my belly. I wish there was a way to record this feeling that I will never experience again. Words and pictures and videos can not come close to recording or describing it, and my own memory will fail me. This all feels brand new even from having Sawyer growing inside of me just 4 years ago. What an incredible gift to experience pregnancy and birth!
I still have energy and am feeling good except for some back pain. I'm weighing in at 145lbs. You are head down and just rolling from side-to-side now, so your kicks are all over the place. We are debating middle names and are between 'Olive Coralie' and 'Olive Campbell'. Campbell is the street we live on, our first real house where Dady and I have lived for almost 8 years and will have had all three of our babies. You'll never remember this house since we are moving in August or September to the one currently being built. But this will be your first home too.
Now let me tell you about your first name, which is a sure thing and has been since we first found out you were a girl. We liked the names Olive and Cora before we knew if you were a girl or a boy and before we went to Israel. During our trip to Israel we learned so much about the significance of the olive trees, olive shoots, olive oil, olive branch, and olives- not only to the country of Israel but in scripture all throughout the Old and New Testaments. I always thinking of the beautiful olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane, some which may even date back to the time when Jesus prayed in the garden. That is an incredible thing to try to wrap your mind around. After returning from Israel and having learned how rich the bible is with olive references, we were set that if you were a girl we would name you Olive. I started praying that you were our little Olive and I’m so in love with you and your name so full of biblical meaning and for Mommy and Daddy personally after a life changing pilgrimage to Israel.
OLIVE
Psalm 52
But I am like an olive tree
flourishing in the house of God;
I trust in God’s unfailing love
for ever and ever.
For what you have done I will always praise you
in the presence of your faithful people.
And I will hope in your name,
for your name is good.
Psalm 128
A song of ascents.
Blessed are all who fear the Lord,
who walk in obedience to him.
You will eat the fruit of your labor;
blessings and prosperity will be yours.
Your wife will be like a fruitful vine
within your house;
your children will be like olive shoots
around your table.
Yes, this will be the blessing
for the man who fears the Lord.
May the Lord bless you from Zion;
may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem
all the days of your life.
May you live to see your children’s children—
peace be on Israel.
Olive, you are fearfully and wonderful made. God’s works are wonderful.
Psalm 139
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.
From: https://www.thattheworldmayknow.com/light-to-the-world
Light To The World
Israel was called "an olive tree, leafy and fair," because they shed light on all. Ancient Jewish Commentary on Jer. 11:16
Olive trees and the abundance of oil they produce were significant in the lives of the people of the Bible. A leading agricultural product, an important part of the diet, and a regular element of religious practices, the olive naturally became part of the imagery the Bible used to describe God and his people in relationship. Knowledge of the beautiful olive tree and its uses can enrich our understanding of God so that we may be as the olive tree was believed to be a "light to the world."
OLIVE TREES
The olive tree is one of the plants most frequently mentioned in the Bible. God called the land of Israel "a land with...olive oil and honey" (Deut. 8:8). The importance of the olive tree was noted in Jotham's parable:other trees chose the olive tree to be king over them (Judg. 9:8-9). As the Bible often notes, the olive tree is beautiful (Jer. 11:16; Hosea 14:6). The faithful followers of God are compared to vigorous olive trees (Ps. 52:8), and their children are said to be like the shoots that appear at the tree's roots, guaranteeing its survival (Ps. 128:3).
Olive trees have extensive root systems, spreading far beyond the reach of the leaves, to provide adequate moisture for them. Because their roots travel so far, these trees often stand alone, which accents their beauty. Olive leaves are gracefully narrow, light green on one side and an even lighter green on the other, and they shimmer beautifully in the wind.
The olive tree thrives throughout Israel. The ability of this tree to grow on rocky hills makes it well suited to the terrain of Israel, a land "with oil from the flinty crag" (Deut. 32:18). The tree grows exceptionally well on the cultivated hillside terraces of Judea and Samaria. Many of the hills of Upper and Lower Galilee are covered with olive trees to this day. They grow especially well in western Galilee, where the tribe of Asher lived.
Olive trees begin to produce olives when they are between six and 10 years old, and they reach their peak at about 40 to 50 years. Many continue to produce an abundance of olives even when they are hundreds of years old. When the trunk becomes large and old, the branches are trimmed off, leaving what appears to be a dead stump. But the next year, fresh shoots spring from the old stump, and soon a new and vigorous growth of branches again produces an abundance of olives.
This phenomenon provided some of the rich imagery of the Bible. Job compared human beings to the olive tree and noted that the olive tree did not die when cut down but sprang again to life, unlike people, who die and are gone (Job 14:7-9). The children of God's people are compared to the many small shoots that spring continually from the root system of the tree, ensuring the continued existence of the fruitful family (Ps. 128:3).
God used the metaphor of an olive tree (and sometimes other trees and vines) to describe his relationship to his people. He planted them as a farmer would plant a beautiful olive tree (Jer. 11:16-17; Ps. 52:8), but he said he would cut them down because the fruit they bore was the worship of Baal (Jer. 11:17). (Also see Matt. 3:10, 7:19; and Isa. 5:1-7 the vineyard was the picture for the same point.) After God allowed his people to be "cut down," they appeared to be nothing but a dead stump. But God and faithful Israelites knew better: Out of that stump came new shoots.
The shoot of Jesse's stump was a special one because God's Spirit rested on him (Isa. 11:1-2). That shoot was Jesus, who was a citizen of Nazareth (meaning "branch" Matt. 2:21-23). Many other prophecies also described the Messiah as a branch or a shoot, probably drawing on the image of the olive tree (Jer. 23:5, 33:15; Zech. 3:8, 6:12). Jesus is the shoot from a stump in the olive grove of Israel. His fruit is obedience and fulfillment.
This beautiful picture of God's people and the Messiah as an olive tree was completed by Paul. Paul reversed the image of the Jewish farmer who grafted a cultivated olive shoot onto the root system of a wild tree to take advantage of its ability to withstand a harsher climate. Israel, God's cultivated tree, had had some of its branches removed. In their place, God has grafted the branches of believing Gentiles. This provides the basis for Paul to remind the Gentiles of their Jewish roots, affirm God's continued love and concern for his Jewish tree, and warn people that since God had removed natural branches for not bearing fruit, how easy it would be for him to remove ones that had been grafted on (Rom. 11:11-24).
The olive tree provides an excellent lesson for the Christian who is not Jewish. As Christians, we have Jewish roots, and Jesus is our Jewish Branch. When God broke down the wall separating Jews and Gentiles, he did not invite the Jews to become Gentiles; he invited the Gentiles to join the Jews, his people. The olive tree can be a constant reminder that Jesus is our source of life?he is our Branch. He sprang from Jewish roots, and so do we. The beautiful olive tree reminds us of God's love and his expectation that all his branches bear fruit in abundance.
FRUIT OF THE OLIVE TREE
The olives of Israel had an unusually high oil content, but some were used as part of the daily diet of the people. Olive trees blossomed in the spring and bore fruit throughout the fall (October through November). Olives were harvested either by beating the branches with poles or by stripping the fruit by hand. Often the olives that were to be eaten were handpicked to prevent bruising. Some olives were picked while they were green (unripe), pickled in vinegar and salt, then eaten fresh, as were some of the ripe olives. Some green fruit was boiled, then dried and used throughout the year. The black (ripe) olives were the best for oil, often containing over 50 percent oil by volume.
During Old Testament times, the ripe olives were pounded to a pulp in pestles (Isa. 17:6) or under people's feet (Micah 6:15). The pulp was collected in reed baskets, and the oil was allowed to drain off. This first oil, the finest, was called "beaten oil" (Lev. 24:2; Ex. 29:40; 1 Kings 5:11). The people then extracted more oil by heating and pressing the pulp again.
During the time of Jesus, new olive-pressing systems were in use. In one system, the olives were placed in a large circular basin in which a great wheel-shaped millstone rolled in a circle. The stone was turned by an animal (e.g., a donkey) or by people. The pulp was then collected in baskets, which were stacked several layers high in (or over) stone pits. A stone weight was placed on top of the baskets, and a heavy wooden beam, with one end in a hole in the wall nearby (often these presses were found in caves) was placed across the pile of baskets. Stone weights were hung from the beam, applying enormous pressure to the olives and squeezing the oil from the pulp. In a similar method, a great stone pillar was placed directly on the olives to press the oil from the pulp. The oil ran through the baskets and into the pit below. The smell of the olive oil spread for miles during the fall of the year, when the oil was being pressed. The oil was collected in jars and placed in a cool place. It was sold or stored for use during the coming year.
Jesus spent the last few hours before his arrest in an olive grove (John 18:1) at a place called Gethsemane (Matt. 26:36). It is likely that this was a cave somewhere on the Mount of Olives (Luke 22:39) where the olives of the nearby groves were pressed. As Jesus reflected on the work he was about to do, he, too, was pressed. The great weight of the sin of the world and the coming rejection by His Father led Him to sweat drops of blood (Luke 22:44). The image of the great weight of a gethsemane on the precious olives can help us imagine the pressure Jesus felt as He contemplated the burden he was to bear. His blood became the symbol for the anointing he provides for those who love him.
ANOINTING OIL
Olive oil had a great variety of practical uses in the Bible, including the following:
An element in food: 1 Kings 17:12Fuel for lamps: Matthew 25:1-13
Medicine:James 5:14; Luke 10:34; Isaiah 1:6
Cosmetics:Ecclesiastes 9:7-8; Esther 2:12
Temple (Tabernacle) menorah:Exodus 27:20
Sacrifices:Exodus 29:40
Olive oil also had great symbolic value. It could indicate honor (Judg. 9:9) and joy. Pouring oil on someone's head was to wish that person happiness (Ps. 23:5, 92:11, 45:7,104:15). It was also a symbol of life. The recovered leper had to place oil on his or her right ear, right thumb, and right big toe after placing blood on those places. Oil was then poured on the leper's head, making "atonement for him before the Lord" (Lev. 14:15-18). Jewish tradition indicates that the oil was a symbol of the leper coming back to life because he or she had been considered dead. Oil was also a symbol of divine blessing (Deut. 7:13; Jer. 31:12; Joel 2:19), which God denied to people who were unfaithful (Micah 6:15; Joel 1:10).
Oil was linked symbolically to the coming of God's Spirit. God's Spirit bestows the "oil of gladness" on those who mourn (Isa. 61:1-6). This image is probably also linked to the use of oil for anointing people for special tasks and appointments. Pouring oil on the chosen one symbolized God's equipping him or her with authority and his calling that person to a specific responsibility. Kings were anointed (1 Sam. 10:1; 1 Kings 1:39), as were priests (Lev. 8:12; Ex. 30:30), holy things (Ex. 30:22-33), and places where God had acted (Gen. 28:18, 35:14). As God put his Spirit on the person called to serve him, the oil used for the outward anointing increasingly came to symbolize the Spirit that accompanied that anointing (1 Sam. 16:13; Isa. 61:1). By New Testament times, anointing had come to be seen primarily as the inner work of the Spirit on Jesus (Acts 10:38) and on His followers (1 John 2:20).
The Hebrew word for "anointed" is mashiach, from which we get our English word Messiah. Though many were anointed (messiahs) in the Old Testament and the believer is anointed by God's Spirit today, there is only one Messiah: Jesus, God's Anointed.
OIL AND LIGHT
Probably the most common use of olive oil was for lighting small household lamps. In this sense, olives and the oil they produced were the source of light for the people. The temple menorah, the eternal flame, was lit by the oil of olives that were specially prepared for this sacred role. The light of this flame symbolized God's presence, which enlightened the world: The olive tree, which produced the oil for anointing, also produced the light that would light the world. It was only natural that Jesus, the Anointed One, would call Himself the "light of the world" (John 8:12). It is not surprising that those who have experienced his anointing should be called the "light of the world" as well (Matt. 5:14).
Also read: http://www.kingdomandglory.com/art/art34.html
