Everything comes from something

So you may be looking at the title of this blog and saying to yourself, “Duh! Of course!” and I wouldn’t blame you a bit if you did. Saying that everything comes from something hardly counts as a new insight. If I understand the law of conservation of mass then once you have everything (see creation, ex nihilo), then it is just a matter of one thing becoming another thing and then another thing on and on and on. But, you may be saying, what about the world of ideas? Aren’t there new things there? Well, it appears that the author of Ecclesiastes might not agree with you as he said, “there is nothing new under the sun” by which he might be pointing out the essential derivative nature of ideas.

As you may recall, I preach on Sundays and do not engage in physics lectures (good thing) nor epistemological speculation about the creation of ideas (also a good thing but at least here I might have something to say that is worth listening to) and what is more I preach from scripture . . . so what’s the deal?

What I wanted us to think about this Sunday is how our faith has come from somewhere besides the obvious source – God. The genesis for this idea* came from St. Paul’s second letter to St. Timothy

I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. (2 Timothy 1:5 NRSV)

Paul is making it clear that Timothy’s faith came from somewhere, it wasn’t just for his generation but rather had a heritage . . . and so does ours.

Knox Presbyterian Our faith comes from somewhere

St. Mark’s Presbyterian Our faith comes from somewhere

Oh by the way, if you a) listen to both sermons; and, b) notice such things, you will be aware that the Knox sermon is shorter than the St. Mark’s sermon. This is not the result of me forgetting what I was going to say but rather the delightful addition to the Knox service of two songs sung by the Sunday School children and an update on the good work Jim and Pat Riddell are doing in Peru which was delivered by Jim himself. It was very encouraging to hear what they are doing there and how it is going. That being said, if anyone does listen to both I would be very interested to hear if there was a noticeable difference in quality and completeness.

Blessings as always,

 

 

 

*see what I did there 🙂