19/12/08
2.00am

They say there’s nothing new under the sun.

Actually, those are Solomon’s words supposedly, or whoever wrote Ecclesiastes. That saying really feels true pretty often. Sure, there are ‘new’ things around us everyday and technology has advanced faster in our lifetimes than it did in centuries before us combined. But really, where it comes to ideas about life and living, there’s very little really new.

Just reading the ancient writings where that quote comes from cements the sentiment. We still feel those same questions about the meaning of life, success, death. We may travel further, communicate faster and have more mind numbing entertainment than they did, but we’re essentially sorting out the same ‘life under the sun’ people faced thousands of years ago.

Injustice. Fear. Futility. Love. Hope. Doubts. Happiness. Birth. Death.


There’s nothing new.

But then this thought struck me tonight that started this ramble. There’s nothing new under the sun but us. But me. But you.

And yes, this isn’t a new thought, I know, I know. It’s the rather old, belabored cliché of uniqueness. We seem to remind children of this alot. Maybe I just needed to be reminded of it tonight.

It can be a bit bewildering for me when the concepts of creativity and originality have become so bound together. I wrestle with the feeling that it’s all been done already and all we have left is to borrow ideas from somewhere. Someone else has already done it, and they’ve probably done it better. And here in my life ‘under the sun’ I often think I’ve got nothing new to add to any of it. And in a way, that’s true. I don’t have any truly new ideas or revelations to give the world.


But I’m something new.


So I can give myself, and you can give yourself, and we discover each other, and together we discover God, who in me, and in you, and through us — may be up to something new.