Curiosity may have killed the cat but that does not make it a bad thing. We should be in a poor way if people had never speculated about the Dog Star or discovered the circulation of the blood or moved ahead through the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages. Thankfully, scholars spent time studying the original documents of the Christian faith and leaving commentaries that could be the basis for further study.
Curiosity may lead us to spend a few minutes on the last chapter of ‘Romans’. Paul mentions one name after another and mostly we know no more than that about them. One particular pair of names may have us twitching. Andronicus and Junia were probably fellow-Jews whom Paul knew and respected highly. They had been fellow-prisoners with Paul and Paul makes a point of saying that they had become Christians before he did. They may even have held apostolic rank as witnesses of Jesus.
This reference reminds us of two things. One is the array of Christian believers whose story was not told and whose lives are a complete mystery to us. There were many Christians who bore responsibility and enjoyed a great reputation in the early Church. The other is that we can’t go wrong if we let these two stay in our minds. We may well have Christian friends we have briefly known and whom we greatly respected who have been active believers in places unknown to us and indeed in fellowships that were markedly different from our own.
It is good to keep curiosity alive.
It is also good to know something about past generations of Christians on whose shoulders we stand e.g. Augustine, (yes, the two of them), Luther, Bunyan, Cranmer – and
Bible translators – Tyndale, Coverdale, J.B. Phillips
Hymn-writers – Watts, Wesley, Newton
Church architects – Wren, Gilbert Scott
Christian poets – Herbert, Donne
Christian preachers – Spurgeon, Booth
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