Sustaining Life

Daniel and I visited a Body World exhibit in New York last week. It's an exhibition of real human bodies, some posed in superhuman positions, some sliced in thin layers and placed between layers of glass. It was supposed to be an educational experience, and for the most part it was. But halfway through the exhibition, I was sucking on Tums and wishing I'd stuck my anti-anxiety medication in my purse.

My head started pounding the moment I saw a section of necrosed brain tissue from an aneurysm. My heart began pounding in my throat when I saw a pacemaker threaded through an aorta and lodge into the muscle of a left ventricle. Waves of nausea topped me off after eyeballing a posed body of muscle fillet, exposing the digestive tract.

It's simply amazing to see how intricate and fragile are bodies are. How fearfully and wonderfully God created us to be! To think that the average human body pumps 1,500-2000 gallons of blood per day is almost scary. I'm a nurse and I don't even like feeling my own pulse. I figure if I'm breathing then I'm good for the moment.

God talks about what He designed our hearts for in the book of Jeremiah (32:39) For I will give them one heart and one purpose--to worship me forever.

Most of us are basically symmetrical, with two of everything, or at least a balanced package of insides. The heart in reality is not your Valentine heart shape. It's a somewhat spherical lopsided fist-sized piece of muscle with valves and vessels that have one purpose---to sustain life. A life made for one purpose--To worship God forever