dna

Praise the Lord, you his servants;
    praise the name of the Lord.
²Let the name of the Lord be praised,
    both now and forevermore.
³From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets,
    the name of the Lord is to be praised.

⁴The Lord is exalted over all the nations,
    his glory above the heavens.
⁵Who is like the Lord our God,
    the One who sits enthroned on high,
⁶who stoops down to look
    on the heavens and the earth?

⁷He raises the poor from the dust
    and lifts the needy from the ash heap;
⁸he seats them with princes,
    with the princes of his people.
⁹He settles the childless woman in her home
    as a happy mother of children.

Praise the Lord. Psalm 113

Last month my husband and I were blessed to become grandparents of a beautiful baby girl. Born on my birthday, the Lord blessed me even more with giving me the gift of being with my daughter as she went into labor and then holding this precious baby just hours after she entered the world! With two daughters of our own I still find myself amazed by the gift of life — how God creates us, weaves us so intricately in a mother’s womb.

A couple of friends and I are doing an advent study and we were tasked during the first week to go back to the book of Genesis. On day 4, we read Genesis 3:14-24 and were asked to list the consequences of Adam, Eve’s and the serpent’s sins. We were also to identify God’s mercy in this passage. Awhile back I heard a lesson about this section of Genesis. On how God gave Adam and Eve both curses and blessings. When you view this text in this way you discover something different that the usual reading. Here’s what He said to Eve:

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.” Genesis 3:16.

We all answered that God cursed her with painful childbirth and that her husband would be “the boss.” If we take this verse as a stand alone that’s what we get, done. However, in the context of the whole creation story, let me point out two blessings.

The only way beings had been created until that time was by God’s miraculous actions. Breathing life into Adam and then taking a piece of Adam and creating Eve. Now Eve will be blessed with herself creating new life. She will be God’s vessel for all humanity. What an incredible gift!
When God created Eve, she was a companion, a helper, so that Adam wouldn’t be alone. With God’s speech to Eve He has introduced love and desire. A marriage, rather than just a friendship. A lifelong covenant with another human being!

Without this curse/blessing for Eve we wouldn’t have the long line of woman who, even in their old and seemingly barren years, gave birth to the line of the future King. And then, of course we come to Mary, Jesus’ mother. Her womb holds the special place of Jesus’ first earthly home. With God’s DNA and that of Joseph and Mary’s woven together to create the God/Man. What a beautiful and glorious gift to all women-kind!

“My soul glorifies the Lord
⁴⁷    and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
⁴⁸for he has been mindful
    of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
⁴⁹    for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
    holy is his name. Luke 1: 46-49

Although Mary was Jesus’ first earthly abode where God did His glorious weaving work, here’s the message I heard preached today: “The Holy Spirit, who lives in us, is leveraging the glory of God to weave our frayed hearts back together.”

Isn’t that a wonderful promise? A gift from Jesus as He left this earthly home to join His father in heaven, the Holy Spirit lives in all who say “I believe.” The glory of God is living in our wombs, in our hearts, in our very souls. Our pastor stated, “He takes the promise of peace and calms our hearts.” He is the God who never leaves us because He has brought His glory to dwell inside us! Oh mighty God, King of Kings and Lord of Lords thank you for this gift of life, this gift of your ever presence.

"To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." Colossians 1:27

Thanks be to God for the blessings He bestowed on Eve that day. And may all Glory, Honor and Power be given to Him alone. Amen

“Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”” John 13:7

In about ten weeks I’ll be a first time grandma. And even though I’ve personally experienced the miracle of childbirth twice, I still find the whole thing a mystery. When I look at an obviously pregnant woman it still fascinates me that there’s a living, breathing being inside that stomach. It all seems so alien-like.

And that’s what my praise focuses on today – the amazing mysteries of God. As we humans have moved along our timeline, “science” has become its own religion. We must “follow the science” and accept that “science” explains everything. I can see why Jesus, in particular, loved children and child-like acceptance of God. Because children keep asking the “whys.” We can say we understand that a woman gets pregnant because a man’s sperm meets a woman’s egg. But can we really explain why a woman releases an egg on such a regular basis? Why one group within a species only has eggs and the other has sperm? And how a sperm knows the path to the egg and that it should break through the barrier to enter it? And once it does, we know a process begins whereby DNA strands begin multiplying over and over creating that beautiful little baby. But why?

We humans certainly love to fool ourselves into thinking we have a lot of control over what and how things happen on this planet. We think we can control the climate. Yet, the world’s climate has been changing back and forth since before humans were in abundance. Droughts, torrential rain, tornados, hurricanes, blizzards — none of these can be made or controlled by man. Of course, if we remove God from the equation then we think we can get to the root “cause” and fix or change everything.

The other day while I was out for a walk, I just started thanking and praising God for this amazingly biodiverse and mysterious world He plopped us to live in. For the air that is just right from me to breathe freely. For the food that literally just grows on trees. For the process of rain and fresh water. For the mystery of making a baby inside our bodies – how everything gets rearranged just right to accommodate the child, how we still don’t know why our body says, “it’s time to be born.”

I know there’s a lot of smart people out there that can sound more “sciencey” than me when talking about how things work on this planet. When I get into those conversations and keep asking, “but why?” or “but how?” the answers always find their end. Science will never be able to answer the final “why?” As a Christian I know I can say, “because God.”

Tag: dna

Knitted with God

His Mysterious Ways