“I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully ade.” (Psalm 139:14) It only takes one trip to the hospital to grasp the truth of this insight from Psalm 139. We all ‘know’ on one level, the amazing complexity of the human body. But when we see people struggling for life, for a sense of normalcy, a sense of “healthiness” after long or short illnesses, then things become much clearer. When we listen to what the surgeons were able to do in reinforcing broken hip bones in the aging, in fighting cancer, in warding off or preventing infections, it is amazing. We are indeed, fearfully, wonderfully made.
I write these reflections under the shadow of several events. At one end of the spectrum, there are the shocking videos released where officials from Planned Parenthood are talking in callous ways about the selling of fetal tissues and the ways that they ‘safeguard’ the important organs, all the while they are dismembering the unborn child. In the middle were extended visits to my mom, recovering from successful hip surgery (thanks for the prayers – keep them coming) and my friend Dave who is back in the hospital following complications from what is usually a simple procedure. And at the end was the sad news that Cole Owens, a youngster of 14 and a member of several of St. Ann’s sports teams, lost his battle against the cancer he has been fighting for the last 7-8 years.
The human body is such an incredible machine, and when it works well, we scarcely give thought to all the marvels it accomplishes on a daily basis. I remember, when growing up, our family had a subscription to the Reader’s Digest. They ran a series of articles over the course of a year on the wonders of the human body. I remember being amazed when they said it would take a chemical plant the size of a half square mile to do all the work that your liver does daily. Or that, if you strung all the capillaries and blood vessels from the human body end to end, they would stretch around the equator of the earth four times. Or if all of the DNA contained within the cells of a human being was stretched out and laid end to end, it would reach to the Moon and back eight thousand times. We are fearfully, wonderfully made.
What we know about the complexity and wonder of the human body – its worth and glory – expands exponentially when we realize our bodies are ‘ensouled’. Our bodies are vessels of the very spirit of God. Because of both of these realities – this fearfully, wonderfully made body and the eternal soul which it contains, each and every human being, from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death has an innate dignity that neither Planned Parenthood, nor cancer, nor illness, nor frailty can take away or expunge. So we remain vigilant in our laws and executive orders, we remain watchful at ‘end of life decisions’, and we are outraged that human fetal body parts are treated as commodities – not because we are democrat or republican, pro-life or pro-choice – but because of that simple truth the psalmist spoke so long ago. We are indeed, “fearfully, wonderfully made.”