Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

“I am fearfully and wonderfully made” exults King David in Psalm 139:14. In his extensive commentary on the Psalms, 19th century Prince of Preachers Charles H. Spurgeon wrote that the science of anatomy was quite unknown to David. Had he been aware of the details of nerves, sinews, blood vessels, and organ structure, his awe would have been multiplied. Beyond that, we may wonder what David would have thought and written had he known of body cells and their role in making tens of thousands of different proteins in the human body and assembling them precisely into various body tissues, organs, and complex organ systems.

Scripture uses Hebrew verbs to state that the Creator initially produced the cosmos ex nihilo, out of nothing existing previously. Theologians describe such miracles as transcendent. At the creation event, God also created matter to obey a multitude of physical laws governed by physical constants–fundamental, invariant quantities observed in nature. We may say the cell was created and coded with the ability to make our bodies and the bodies of all living things. This ability clearly has the hallmark of an intelligently designed process since codes are always the product of a mind.

King David the psalmist pronounced the human body “fearfully and wonderfully made” three thousand years ago. Knowledge of human anatomy advanced slowly and did not flourish until the 17th and 18th centuries. But detailed knowledge of cell function and how we are made has been acquired only within the last few decades.

Psalm 139, according to Spurgeon, “warns us against that practical atheism which ignores the presence of God, and so makes shipwreck of the soul.” With our present knowledge of the protein manufacturing ability of the cell, the phrase “fearfully and wonderfully made” becomes even more powerfully meaningful.

http://jasscience.blogspot.com/2010/09/fearfully-and-wonderfully-made.html