One of the exhibits at the “Deep Time” exhibit, currently at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, is called “Your body through time: Your body is the result of more than 3.7 billion years of evolution.”

So we didn’t just come from Mommy and Daddy, our favorite human way to say it; 3.7 billion years has been at work bringing us to where we are, and we’re not the only ones. A vast tree of created beings has come to be in deep time.  

The Book of Genesis says in its creation story we come from “the dust of the earth”. All of us. The story we know now is much more complex, and we still don’t know it all .  

I’m sure the young children and an adult viewing the exhibit in the photo above went away, like me, wondering at the mystery it presented. “ Too wonderful for me, this knowledge, too high, beyond my reach.” (Psalm 139)

The same can said of St. Paul’s words to the Colossians read today in our liturgy: 

“In Jesus Christ, everything in heaven and on earth has been created, things visible and invisible.” (Colossians 1,12-20) 

Yet, this knowledge tells us who we are and what we are to do. We need to keep it in mind.