Psalm 139:14

                    "I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous

                      are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well." Psalm 139:14

I'm quite sure that David wasn't watching the Olympic Games when he made the above statement, but had they been around in his time, he could certainly have been inspired to say it after seeing some of the things our bodies are able to do. And, yes I know, this is two weeks in a row that I'm using the Olympics as my inspiration for an editorial, but I just can't help myself, they provide a wealth of commentary fodder for an itinerant editorialist like me.

I mean, just look at the things the Olympic athletes are able to physically do with their bodies. Even though I'm tired of watching the girls fly, jump, twist and otherwise contort their tiny little bodies on bars, vaults, mats and the balance beam (is there no end to the number of events in this sport?) one has to admit that the things they can do is incredible.

David said a mouthful when he praised God for making mankind in the form that He did - "fearfully and wonderfully." A few years back some scientists were reporting that they were trying to create life in a test tube. Actually they were attempting to get some minute particles of various forms of matter to somehow fuse together which they thought would be an acid that our bodies basically consist of. Sort of like the theory of a molecule of slime bumping into another bit of slime in the ocean and VOILA!, life started.

To my knowledge, they haven't succeeded in "creating life" in their test tubes yet, but reading about their efforts conjured up some questions in my feeble little mind. First, how about trying to figure out where the oceans came from. Or the little bits of matter (slime)? And if they did ever get some sort of "life acid" in a test tube, how do they get it to the human bodies we're watching perform at the Olympics?

Personally I prefer the easier-to-believe version found in Gen. 1:27 where it says that I was made "in the image of God" and in 2:7 He tells me what He made me out of - "the dust of the ground" and then He "breathed the breath of life" into me. But, if you want to believe that you got here in the form that you're in by the "slime-bumping theory" nobody's going to stop you. Just recognize that a lot more faith is required to believe that theory than "In the beginning God...."

But, let's return to our discussion of the human body that God "fearfully and wonderfully" made. There are many, many interesting things about the make-up of our bodies and the first thing I'll mention is the scientific finding that our physical body contains about all the elements found on the earth. Doesn't that seem to verify what Gen. 2:7 said? I'll take a leap of faith here and say - yes it does.

If you looked at our human body as a machine, it has to be the most amazing and complicated piece of machinery ever built. No human engineer could ever come close to making something that will do what the human body will do. Oh, they can make robotic type machines that can do a few specific things, but really, what robot could ever be able to run, jump, swim or perform the way the Olympic athletes do? Or even us, for that matter. No robot can even do the everyday activities that we ordinary people are able to perform, regardless of the level of our performance.

In the last paragraph I mentioned the complexity of the body and here's a few examples of that complexity. There are some things about our bodies that almost stagger our imagination. Let me just mention it's circulatory system with it's pump and all of it's blood vessels. Did you know that the average body has about 60,000 miles of blood vessels? And that the pump that runs this system pumps 10 pints of blood EVERY MINUTE? Since our entire blood supply consists of from 8-10 pints of blood, every bit of our blood is circulated through the pump and body EVERY MINUTE! Don't know about you, but I find that literally amazing.

Here's some more information about our circulatory system that I find mind-blowing: the capillaries, which are the smallest blood vessels in the body and reach into their particular areas, if laid out surface-wise would cover an area of about 1 ½ acres. And, they are constantly opening and closing and that requires a control system to keep them from all opening at the same time. If they did, all of our blood would drain into them in a matter of seconds. Plus, it's the capillaries in the lungs that do the exchanging of oxygen for the carbon dioxide in the blood. How does that work? Amazing, isn't it?

Well, how about the body as a whole? It contains about 208 bones, 650 muscles and has more than 100 joints. I've been moving all this past week and I have at least that many aching right now. The things that hold the muscles to the bones are called tendons and do you know that they can take stress up to 8 tons per square inch? Almost unbelievable.

We have around 9,000 taste buds (I think I have more, at least that's going to be my excuse for being overweight), millions of nerve cells with about 4 million little sensors in our skin that let's us know when something is hot or cold or is painful.

How about the covering of our body? Have you ever considered what an amazing thing our skin is? To me, it's just about the most remarkable part created by God. The average body has about 20 square feet of covering material (I've stretched mine a bit further), it wears away and is replaced every few weeks. But here's where it really gets mind-boggling: it's a barrier that keeps out dirt and germs, and also moisture (it's waterproof) all the while it's keeping the moisture inside the body from drying out. It also has about 5 million hairs on it. (Probably a bit less for some of us)

But really, the greatest part of the human body, put there by God, is it's operating system, it's computer - the brain. Here's a lump of material that weighs about 3 pounds and controls everything we do, consciously and unconsciously. Consciously: how we think, talk and act, and unconsciously: breathing and well, how about those little capillaries opening and closing, do you have to think about that? Yeah, man can build computers that do amazing calculations, but always remember this - it's man's internal, God-given, computer that devises the ones he makes.

In wrapping up my thoughts here today let me just opine that no scientist, playing with his test tubes, could ever produce anything that remotely resembles life as we know it. That our magnificently created bodies did not get here by an accidental bumping together of slime in the ocean. (Even Sounds sorta slimy to me) It would be the height of man's arrogance to think that they could somehow duplicate the system that we're watching perform in the Olympic games.

No, I prefer to echo the words of David and praise God "for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well."

Ron Covey