Infusion Bible eStudies are downloadable small group studies that can be read online, printed, or emailed. Each study includes a leader guide and a study guide and is suitable for a one-hour group Bible study.
Listen...to the words of the Scripture, and in them discover God's message for you today.
Look...at a brief verbal snapshot from the scrapbook of contemporary life and discover its connection both to you and to the Scripture passage.
Live...inside the Scripture to discover its context and message; then allow the Scripture to come alive in you and cause you to live out your faith in new and more-effective ways.
Read an excerpt from this study below.
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There is an old saying that “every person is born an original but dies a copy.” When I first heard that observation, I wanted to argue with it. I immediately thought of people such as Benjamin Franklin, Mother Teresa, and Albert Einstein who were so unique in their thinking or approach to life that it seems slanderous to call them a copy of anyone else. Take Isaac Newton, for example. He formulated the law of gravity and invented differential calculus. Newton was certainly an “original.” Yet almost as quickly, I recalled a comment by Newton. He said, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”1 He was acknowledging the debt he owed to those who had blazed the trail in science before him, especially Galileo and Johannes Kepler. Franklin and Einstein were also indebted to pioneering thinkers who preceded them; and Mother Teresa, of course, modeled her life of service on Jesus.
I still do not like the saying, however. Claiming that anyone is a “copy” denies our God-given uniqueness. Nonetheless, the saying offers a basic truth: No one arrives at who he or she is without being shaped by other people and events. In terms of our Christian faith, some of us have been fortunate to be mentored by godly people.
