The Splinter

on being designed by God

Scripture Reading: Genesis 1

The Splinter

 A while back I drove a splinter into the tip of my right index finger. I went straight in and buried itself deep into a tomb of flesh.  Retrieval was impossible. The pain went all the way into the finger joint. Every time I touched something with that finger, I was reminded of the presence of pine buried deep inside.

Then, three days into the ordeal, I gave my finger a hard squeeze and with a slight pop, the sliver of wood came sliding out, oiled by ooze manufactured by internal physical defenses. The exodus was painless and smooth.

I stared at the offending splinter for a few minutes in curious amazement. I realized that, without any conscious effort on my part, my body had gone to work attacking and conquering the foreign invader. Systems kicked in to deal with the problem - complicated biological systems. My body did what I could have never figured out how to do on my own.

As I thought about this, I was reminded of how many things are happening in my body all the time, complex things, done without my help or input. I never tell my heart to beat or remind myself to take a breath. I don’t pass along instructions to my digestive systems about what to do with what I just put in them. I’ve never given assignments to the millions upon millions of cells in my body as to what part of that body they are to join. All these things function without any help from me.

It’s almost as if a highly intelligent engineer designed all these things and figured out how to make them all function independently and in perfect harmony with each other. Go figure.