For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. (Psalm 139:13-14 ESV)
Christmas seems like a great time to talk about the birth of a child. So for the next few days that is what I hope to do. Today though I am not going to write about the child you expect. No, today I go closer to home. The past November on the 26th at 9:31 PM we welcomed a new addition to our family, a new granddaughter Clara Mae. Clara was 8 pounds and 1 ounce and 20 inches long. No matter how many times I see a newborn I cannot help but think of the miracle that is the birth of a baby. How is it that something so complex as a human being can start out as a microscopic cell and grow into this perfect replica of their parents?
Now the naturalist leaning will tell us that it is just a matter of the cell splitting and then using the information contained in the DNA to over the course of about nine months form a baby. All very natural and no need to bring in any supernatural elements thank you very much.
Yet when we look at how the fertilized egg “knows” what to do and in what order to create this new human we have to look at the DNA. DNA is the language of the cell. Every creature that has ever lived on this earth has DNA and uses it to replicate and repair itself. The DNA alphabet consists of four letters and every creature including us uses these four letters to reproduce. Think about that for a moment.
The English alphabet has 26 letters. Other alphabets have more or fewer letters of characters but none have only four. Yet somehow the four letters in our DNA are able to carry all the information needed to make another human.
I am typing this on Microsoft Word. Word allows me to change to font and its size. I can alter the spacing and numerous other aspects of my document with a few clicks of the mouse. I just type and words appear on my screen. Now I am not a programmer and have no idea how complex the code that created Word is but I am betting it is pretty complex. Yet the coding for word is child’s play next to the coding that was needed to create me.
Now no one I know thinks that somehow Word was created without the need for intelligence. Yet many think that the code to create each of us somehow just came about through a random and undirected process. That just doesn’t seem very likely to me.
Over three thousand years David wrote a praise to God. In it he acknowledges that God formed him in his mother’s womb. David realized that something as remarkable as humans needed something more than just chance. We need a creator. Someone who guides us from the moment of conception to the moment we draw our final breath.
When I hold my new granddaughter Clara I am once again reminded of the miracle of birth. It is another miracle of birth that we celebrate every December 25th when God Himself came down to live amongst us.
Have a blessed day,
David
