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January 02, 2008

Nothing New

In honor of the year flipping forward to 2008, I dedicated an entire day to relaxing which generally leads to thinking. I’m not sure why my thoughts fixated on the topic of ancestry and “roots” but they did. I spent some time imagining what they, my ancestors, may have been like. I envisioned family members in tie dye, flapper dresses, pilgrim hats, and Flintstone attire. Somehow this got me thinking about how much of what I KNOW has come from those who had gone before me. And that got me thinking about how much of what I OWN has belonged to someone else previously (virtually all my clothing, furniture, and décor are a result of hand-me-downage). This got me thinking about how everything I’M MADE OF has been part of or belonged to someone or something else before me too! By this I mean on a molecular level!
In order to explain this without “going geek on you” as my Science Olympics friends used to say, I’ll spare you a chemistry lesson on the breaking of chemical bonds and formation of new ones. Instead, I'll just say this: A long time ago my dad told me that ALL water stays in the biosphere FOREVER and all our cells are part of atoms that have been here since the dawn of time! Now, if that’s true--and it is according to most Christian and secular scientists--THEN it’s possible that the water moistening my eyes could have been sweat from an ancient dinosaur or part of a raindrop that fell on Noah’s ark, or maybe even the breath of Jesus himself!

Isn’t that incredible?

Everybody on the radio’s talking about newness and breaking from the past as we usher in 2008, and here I am feeling more ancient and connected to the past than ever before.

Happy new year you atoms of old! May God use each of us fearfully and wonderfully made creatures to do great things this year!

Posted by Heidi V. at 02:50 PM | Comments (5)