Source of Life


Meteorites carried life-producing phosphorus to Earth



When God began to create heaven and earth ... the earth being unformed and void, the ruach of God sweeping over churning chaos ... he said “Let there be light,” and there was light. ... So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Gen 1:1f, 1:27)

At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of  interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home. By your will they were created and have their being. ... Lord God of our Fathers: God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: Open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world about us. (BCP 370, 372)

We can be so closeted in certitude that our minds are closed to the voice, works, wonders and word of God. In one city where we lived and served, a neighboring church were doing what they called “candidating,” by which they meant they were interviewing pastors who had applied for their vacant pulpit. They were having the same conversation with each candidate, asking the same questions of each man who applied. Two early questions were, “Do you believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, that the Bible, the word of God, every word is literally true?” And “Do you believe that the first three chapters of Genesis are literally, factually, historically true and correct?” A negative response, indeed any hesitancy about certainty, and the man was disqualified, not considered.

I don’t have an issue with their process or their theological requirement of their pastor, any more than I would wonder why a Roman Catholic parish expected their priest to subscribe to Transubstantiation and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin; that’s their dogma, to be a member in good standing, that’s what you have to accept. 

As an Episcopalian though, an Anglican (and the Creeds included) I am attuned to a theological process that encourages our own thinking. Scripture, Tradition and Reason. I am inspired by Genesis 1:27, and entertained by Mark Twain, and spurred on by Steve Jobs, to think. With my godly-image brain. Accordingly (a poor word fraught with arrogance, choose your own connector), when scientists discover something new in the recesses of an atom, or a 3.5 million year old ancestor of Linda’s but not mine, 


or a distant galaxy dating from just after the Big Bang some 13.8 billion years ago, or this morning’s news that life on earth may have been ignited by phosphorus from a meteorite 3.5 billion years ago


there is no reason to feel affronted, offended that my religion has been rubbished because “the Bible says --- .” Neither history nor science, but Heilsgeschichte, the Bible tells me that when God created, he wanted a special relationship between himself and earthlings. It tells me that God gave me this godly human brain that helps me explore and better understand God and the wonders of creation. It tells me that God loves me.

TW+