Foundations of Faith

These days our household is full of big questions from our almost four-year-old. “Momma, why is it raining?” “Dada, why are there bad people?” Our conversations are often filled with lots of trying to make sense of the world around us. Some of the questions make for fun scientific explanations about the clouds and moisture and the rain cycle. Others tug at my heart because they show that this world is not the pristine thing I want it to be for my dear little one. 

In worship we find ourselves in the middle of a five-week series on the book of Genesis. Normally in our preaching and our worship calendar, Ethan and I rarely deviate from the lectionary. But, back in January as we planned for the year and looked to the summer, it felt like the right time to look back on the stories of the beginning of the Bible—and how they might shape us still today. 

The first followers of Yahweh also found themselves wrestling with big issues. I imagine their curious little children were asking them the same sorts of questions that float through my house about the nature of the world or the concerns of their day. The words of Genesis attempted to explain the world they lived in and the God they followed to big and little listeners alike. 

For me, these stories have always held a mythic quality—maybe it was all the early childhood Sunday School coloring pages of Noah, Abraham, Adam and Joseph. Or maybe it was the movies on their epic tales that captivated my young imagination. But as we are reading and wrestling through these epochs in Genesis again, I am reminded that these aren't just bedtime simple stories to satiate a child’s curiosity. The stories of Genesis are the foundation for how we understand the world of Yahweh, and our place in it. These stories make use of imperfect heroes, and remind us that we all have a role in God’s world. There is so much in these 50 chapters of Genesis, and we are only spending five weeks on it. I hope as you are able to participate in worship in this series that you experience a bit of the wonder, a bit of the questions, and a bit of the work of God in the world. We all need the reminder that God is the author and perfector of our faith and of our world—and may that guide us as we go through this summer.