Fearfully and Wonderfully Made - 2

Dear Journal,
Today was a difficult day; I was stressed about everything from my summer job to family strife. However, when I picked up Fearfully and Wonderfully Made God immediately reminded me of His peace that passes all understanding. As the book recounted Dr. Brand’s first secret encounter with the amoeba, I too could feel the chilly, sterile air of the laboratory scented faintly with formalin.

The lab is quiet as I take a seat and peer down my scope; it is just me and the organisms. No one yells or fights—there is no voice to hear but that of my own thoughts and of the Holy Spirit. It isn’t hard to imagine what these organisms look like: I saw them for myself last semester in Introduction to Biology (ironically, my sample was also taken from the campus lake). As I gaze at the wonderful, wiggling world through my microscope, I can hear the words of Jesus from John 4, “a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem”—indeed I worship Him in my imaginary lab.

Dr. Brand reflects on the mind blowing idea that somehow, all the “every day forces of millions of spinning atoms” come together in just the right way to give this amoeba life. And as I depart from the quiet reverie of the lab in my head, I thank God for what He revealed to me while reading. “Look at the amoebas: they do not worry or stress about what to do, and yet I integrate the processes of each tiny one. Are you not more valuable than them? I am the God who sets the forces of universe into motion—will I not also orchestrate your life? Seek first my kingdom and my righteousness, and all these other things will be provided for you as well.”

God also animated my spirit with the gift of laughter. In chapter 2, this book quotes Lewis Thomas from his book The Medusa and the Snail and it reads thus:

The mere existence of the [human embryonic] cell should be one of the greatest astonishments of the earth. People ought to be walking around all day, all through their waking hours, calling to each other in endless wonderment, talking of nothing except that cell…If anyone does succeed in explaining it within my lifetime, I will charter a skywriting airplane, maybe a whole fleet of them, and send them aloft to write one great exclamation point after another, around the whole sky, until all my money runs out” (Brand & Yancey, p. 37).

I smiled as I imagined the many times I have run up to Nicole, bounding with excitement, and tightly grasped her arm only to say, “Your neurons just told your brain that I’m touching you right now! Isn’t the nervous system simply amazing?” Perhaps I should make use of Mr. Thomas’s idea and spray paint that on the Cedarville rock.

(To read part 3, click here)