The Miracle That Is You
“Men go forth to wonder at the heights of mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of the rivers, the vast compass of the ocean, the courses of the stars: and they pass by themselves without wondering.”
Isn’t it puzzling how we humans take our bodies and our lives for granted? For many years, I studied and taught courses having to do with the human body and I must tell you, the more I learned, the more I realized just how “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139) we are. Every single minute of every day, our incredible bodies hum along, a symphony of rhythms, a brilliant harmony of precise chemical reactions and amazing synchronous firings. Our triune brain is capable of an instantaneous response to threat, and both the darkness of revenge and the grace of forgiveness. The very fact that I can sit here at my computer and write a string of symbols that you will see, interpret and understand, is something that should inspire awe in us. But it doesn’t. Mostly, we pay attention to our bodies when they don’t perform as they should.
When we read the words, “your body is a temple,” do we stop and apply that bit of wisdom to the flesh and blood and bone and brain and pinky-fingers that we call our own? When we look into the eyes of a newborn baby, do we realize he or she is the compilation of millions of years of genetic heritage and yet, is unique in all time? There is no other, nor has there ever been nor ever will be, another like him/her. How many of us marvel that over the course of a year, every cell in our bodies, except for nerve cells, dies and is replaced with brand new ones; that the fascia that holds everything together inside us is crystalline in structure and is, in fact, a vast system of communication—that every cell in the body is in constant communication with every other cell?
How awesome is the body-mind that is you! Today, give thanks for that; for all the beats of your heart, for all the firings of your neurons, for all the excretions of your glands and the miraculous coordination of precise movements that allows you to go forth into the world in wonder.
Keeping the faith,
Jane
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