Blessed to be a Pound Dog

Blessed to be Ain't Nuthin' but a Pound Hound Dog

“No!” pouted my three year old, “I don’t want a dog! It’s going to lick my face! I want…
I want a turtle instead!”  Honestly, I was inclined to agree. When our family went out on a stroll
through the neighborhood on one balmy Sunday afternoon, the thought of a dog was not thrilling to
me either. A turtle...well, that I could live with. I was no stranger to exotic pets. I had owned a fierce
ferret named Ishido, a clammy iguana that never got named due to its’ unfriendliness, 6 baby goats
who thought I was their mother,  a wolf spider my older son caught at Scout camp and a boring
tarantula that was the result of successful begging at a school science night.

But a dog...I just wasn’t sure.

Having grown up in Jamaica, I was very familiar with having dogs, but they did not live inside the
house and they certainly never licked my face. The thought of a dog in the house was daunting to
say the least. But by the end of that notable Sunday afternoon walk, the turtle was out and the dog
was in - with lots of promises that no faces would get licked that didn’t want to.

Enter Zoey. Her sweet face practically leaped from the dog rescue website.
She was a border collie and we think pit bull mix and she looked like Martha from the PBS cartoon,
Martha Speaks. She was just perfect for us. Aside from once eating a whole bag of  Dum Dums,
she was the most obedient and likeable dog. She lived to please us, as dogs tend to do.
When no one else noticed I had come home, there was Zoey, welcoming me home with wagging
fervor… and yes, a few licks. She was loved and she knew it and she dedicated herself to letting
us know how much she loved us.

So my sweet Zoey has caused me to think a lot about Jesus.

Ummm...Jesus?

Yep. Jesus.

We hear so much about religion and the “thou shalt nots”. We hear sermons about not judging and
holiness and loving others - it’s all overwhelming to figure it all out.

But it’s not. Because Jesus really wants us to be just like Zoey. That rescued pound dog who is so
delighted to have a forever Master to call her own.

When Jesus told us the Great Commandment he said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart,
mind, soul and strength, then go love your neighbor as yourself.”

So in reality, we kind of gloss over loving God like that because it’s really hard to know how. That’s
where Zoey comes in.

Imagine that you are an average dog, and you end up in a kill shelter. Unless someone intervenes,
your fate is sealed and there’s nothing you can do about it. One day someone walks in and you are
exactly who they want, and as they scoop you up and wile that kill shelter fades into the background,
someone is tickling your ears and telling you how much they love you. There’s even a sweet little boy
that eventually allows you to lick his face.

So you're in their new house, and you realize that you’re not just a temporary guest but you’re a part
of the family. You have a favorite spot on the couch, and you love going for walks and hanging out
with your people. You learn their ways and you realize quickly that eating Dum Dums is not
something they really want you to do. And even though those Dum Dums are so good,
somewhere in the back of your mind, you realize they said no for your own good.

And you are so grateful...because someone loved you enough to save you and make you a
treasured part of their family.

And you love them back with all your heart!  You run to the door when they come home.
You sit beside them even when they watch shows about cats. You love the people they love, even
the sweet boy who decides you’ve had enough licks for the week...or month.

It’s not a perfect translation… but isn’t this analogy true for us who call ourselves followers of Jesus?

We’ve been rescued.... and we we didn’t have the resources to be part of the process.

We’ve been adopted into a family that loves us… even though they didn’t need us.

We’ve been lovingly instructed about how to become a contributing member of the household.

That reminds me of something...

So, when I went to college, I learned to swear...a lot.  I had not done so growing up but once in the
college atmosphere,  I really found the words to be amazing adjectives to most of what I wanted to
say. I wasn’t even trying to be obnoxious, I just really  liked how it sounded.

But, towards the end of my college experience when I truly met Jesus and experienced His
salvation, I saw a verse that said, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths,
but only what is helpful for building others up according to the needs, that it may benefit
those who listen.” (Eph 4:29-30). There were others with this general instruction including
not taking God’s name in vain.

I was guilty.

I was convicted. I wanted to please this Jesus who rescued me and called me His own.

I stopped swearing.

Now am I perfect in this? Of course not. Do I try? I do. I don’t want to demean Jesus or
anyone else with my words.

As I look through this instruction book called the Bible, as I pray and ask God to shape and
change my heart to look more like the One who rescued me, I struggle.

Daily.

The world around me is often telling me the exact opposite.  I need to ask for help from
God’s Spirit that is given to me for that purpose. And He does. He always does.

I know that even though there are instructions I don’t want to follow (bless those who curse
me...uhh why?), I ask for understanding, and a heart of obedience.

One of my favorite verses is  Ps 40:2 “He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the
miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.”  I LOVE that. It’s King
David realizing he was also a rescue at the hands of a God who showed him mercy.
It’s also... me, realizing I am a rescue who was shown mercy. I pray my every day is a
grateful response to that mercy.

Oops… hold on. There’s a dog licking my face.

Nope...there's no such thing as simple

My husband-to -be really should have gotten a clue that he was not in for a simple married life when I thought it was a good idea to grow our own daisies for our wedding . It’s not that I don’t want a simple life…it’s just that it seems to be…well, impossible. It’s also compounded by the fact that the grand ideas I have generally become too big for me to handle and then I drag every willing and unwilling soul in to help. Daisies really were just the beginning…

Our son’s 4^th birthday party with a dinosaur theme quickly involved building giant paper mache volcanoes  that erupted. This of course begged dry ice and baking soda and vinegar and an extensive play list of dinosaur marching songs…while my husband quietly wondered what was wrong with a party at Chucky Cheese. He was probably lamenting this while he helped the Dinosaur Bounce House lady tie down the ferocious  fire breathing  monster that threatened to take down the fence in our back yard as it was being put up.

Or there was the time I volunteered to help my son’s entire first grade class of 22 students bake Amish bread cornucopias from scratch for a Thanksgiving craft. Yes, I realize I didn’t think it would take half the night to make, roll out, cut and prep several hundred little strips of dough. Or that  baking a bazillion cornucopias and adding sweet little Thanksgiving notes to them in the 3 hours I had from when the kids finished making them to when they needed them to bring home would require more than just my two hands and good intentions.

We won’t even mention when I tried to make the entire family’s Star Wars Halloween costumes using fabric glue, or the Medieval Birthday party where we made all the shields from scratch and had a family crest and a life sized dragon sewn to hang on the walls.

 And I wonder why my husband whimpers whenever I announce, “I’ve been thinking…”

But you know…they all turn out, in the end, really well, in that memories are made that our kids bask in and never forget about.  Schemes that come to fruition  when it’s all said and done were worth the crazy effort put into it. And I am so grateful for a husband and family that realize that, with me, there is no such thing as simple…

You see, that’s why I understand, what I am sure, is the righteous indignation of the Amoeba.

It is so often dubbed a “simple one celled life form”. Or one of the first basic forms of life to evolve from the primordial stew”. Hmmph!  Simple indeed! If you care to look a little closer, there is no such thing as simple with an Amoeba… and the assertion that it could have simply happened by random collisions of simple proteins…is well, laughable. Dare I say it? Impossible by chance.

Because I understand that it is an insult to be labeled as “simple” … I stand with the amoeba to plead its case.

Evolutionary scientists theorize that simple chemicals in a “pre-biotic” earth linked together, perhaps when lightning struck the earth to form amino acids and then, simple proteins. Given enough time (millions of years) and random collisions, these proteins were able to organize and eventually form simple life forms. Enter the Amoeba, simple archaic bacteria and other one celled organisms.

Sounds plausible? I suppose…

Stanley Miller, a professor at the University of Chicago, was able to create simple amino acids by trying to recreate, what he theorized, was a replication of the chemicals in the primordial soup. This experiment was lauded by famous scientists and printed in biology text books nationwide. Many thought this was proof that simple amino acids, and therefore simple life forms, could be created randomly.

However, after many years it was shown by many scientists, including some at NASA, that the earth’s atmosphere could not possibly have contained the gases used in this experiment… thus invalidating the whole experiment. Interestingly enough, this experiment is still taught as fact in many schools and is still in text books even today!

Evolutionary scientists are still wringing their hands trying to figure out how those first amino acids (which are the building blocks of the proteins that make up our body) could have been randomly formed. I could give them a few ideas found in Genesis 1…hmmmmm

Before I go back to defending the Amoeba, I should say, one of the tenets on which biology is found is that there is no such thing as spontaneous generation of living things. That is, we no longer believe maggots arose spontaneously from rotting meat and other such notions that went out with the realization the world wasn’t flat. However, evolutionary science would have to somehow make an exception to this law to claim living things such as my amoeba came from non living things like methane gas and lightning.

But, let’s give these scientists a little latitude for a moment…a little rope, if you will. Let’s say they were able to organize these amino acids into simple proteins. Let’s say that randomly these proteins overcome a host of issues that can’t be explained by any evolutionary scientist (such as chirality, but that’s another blog entirely) and there in the bubbling early earth soup were all the proteins needed to create life…what would happen then? Think about it. Would that be enough to prove living things could be created by the gathering together of the right proteins?

Let’s bring in our amoeba. Her name is Amazing Amy. She is one celled and a sophisticated, independent, assertive phenomenon. She is beautiful and moves with fluid motion as she goes about her business.

She gathers her own food and digests it, she avoids danger, she keeps the chemical and water balance of her body constant and when she grows to a certain size, copies her DNA and makes a little daughter cell clone to carry on the tradition. 

Did you gloss over that bombshell you just read?

Read that last sentence again. Did you miss the part where it said DNA?  Yes, friends, Deoxyribonucleic acid!  

Say that wonderfully convoluted word again because it is every bit as complicated as it sounds, and then some!

DNA is the blueprint for life. Every single living thing needs DNA so that the code for every detail and action that is performed within its body will have a set of instructions to follow.  No organism can be counted as a living thing if it does not have DNA!

Why is DNA so important?

1.  1. It carries all the genetic information for an organism. Every protein that is made happens only because DNA has a specific code to manufacture the amino acids that make the protein, then it puts these amino acids together in the right order, then it folds the protein into just the right shape, then it sends the protein where it needs to go to perform its job. Multiply that by the thousands of unique proteins in an organism and you see the daunting task DNA has. Protein cannot be made without  DNA!

2.  2.Information is passed down to the next generation through DNA. There is a very complex system through which DNA makes copies of itself and then divides the cell so more copies of itself will be made. Organisms cannot make babies without DNA.

3.  3.DNA is very complicated!! It is one thing for evolutionary scientists to say that very simple amino acids can be formed through random collisions (when they have tinkered with the conditions to make it optimal). It is quite another to say DNA could be made randomly.

     DNA contains the alphabet from which the words and sentences and the great novel from which living things are made. 

     If the Encyclopedia Britannica was cut up into its individual letters and then thrown in the air millions of times, do you suppose it would fall to the ground in such a way that the letters would be in the same order and meaning they were in before the Encyclopedia  was cut up? I’ll let you answer that one, because that’s what it would take for DNA to form randomly. There is no such thing as a simple organism because all organisms are based on extremely complicated DNA.

Amazing Amy Amoeba would like me to tell you she is not simple and random. She is not a coincidence! She’s got DNA folks and she’s got skills! She’s sassy and sophisticated and the very opposite of simple!

Instead Amazing Amy is an expression of the complexity that could only come from an Intelligent, Omniscient, Divine mind. My Amy is a testament to the Glory of an all Powerful God! My Amy knows, as I do, that also for God, there is no such thing as simple!

That hole in my heart...and that hole in my heart

“I think you WILL have this baby today! Just try to make it after 10pm as I have tickets to the theater in Boston!"

With this news I gave my doctor a huge hug and cast a smug “I told you so” smile at the nurse who had minutes before insisted I make an appointment for the next week even though I told her I was in labor.

What followed was an amazingly fun day, considering I was about to have a baby in less than 9 hours. One that could only happen if you’d been on bedrest for 4 months and were determined to recapture some lost time. 

In the 2 weeks since being off bedrest, I, my husband and my 38 week belly had gone to the beach, gone baby stuff shopping, room decorating and just the day before on a walking visit of Boston.  Now that I had a precious few hours left, we went to the chiropractor and out for a Chinese food dinner. 

It wasn’t until I had to close my eyes and tell the waiter to “hold a sec” for my order as I breathed through a contraction that came every 5 minutes that I figured we might want to get home and get our things together. (I did finish my General Tsao’s chicken though. I had heard they didn’t feed you at the hospital if you were in labor and I was determined not to be hungry)!

Labor at the hospital was…relaxing and enjoyable. I kid you not. My husband and the nurse watched the Yankees play the Red Sox and I hung out in a Jacuzzi tub. My doctor whisked in (after our nurse had done all the work) at about 11:30 and at 11:58 I had a beautiful  baby boy in my arms.. He was bright eyed and pink and never uttered a sound except a gurgled greeting. He looked around (and I swear gave me a wink) and then put his head down with an “I got this, Mama” look on his face.

It was interesting to me that he didn’t cry. I thought all babies did. But I guess my boy was too cool to seem less than completely in charge of the situation. That “too cool for school” attitude remains even now.

It wasn’t until years later that I had a full understanding of the absolute miracle that took place when my boy took his first breath. (One of thousands of miracles to be sure, but this one absolutely floors me. every.single. time.)

Think about it: prior to being born, Mama took care of everything. She did the breathing, eating, taking out the trash and Junior just sat there kicking my ribs while the umbilical cord and Mama did all the hard work.

His heart had no need to pump blood to the lungs to pick up oxygen, because, well because Mama had already sent over a fresh supply. (I’m beginning to see a theme here…).

In an adult’s (actually anyone post being born) lungs, blood is pumped over from the heart, and there in the lungs, the blood picks up a fresh supply of oxygen and gets rid of the carbon dioxide waste.

In an unborn child’s heart, the lungs do not take in oxygen and the heart does not pump blood over to pick oxygen up (as Mama has already provided fresh, oxygen-rich blood and sent it to the heart via the umbilical cord).

Instead – the heart bypasses the lungs almost altogether. Kinda hard to imagine, but it does so because the heart develops with a hole in it between the right and left side (the hole is called the foramen ovale). To oversimplify what takes place, instead of the blood going from the right side of the heart to the lungs, the blood is shunted back to the left side of the heart through this hole. The left side of the heart then sends it to the rest of the body. 

The right side of the heart essentially has a 9 month vacation since the lungs do not have any work for it to do. The hole through the middle of the heart ensures that this happens. This works great while the baby is unborn and Mama is literally breathing for him.

Listen very carefully to this next part. It blows my mind every time I think of it. It’s go time and Junior is born. Bright lights, cold room – a shock to the system to say the least. Junior’s heart must immediately change its anatomy so that blood can immediately start being shunted to the lungs so that with that first wail (a beautiful sound to Mama), there will be a transport system for oxygen to the lungs, then back to the heart and then to the rest of the body.

Mama ain’t takin’ out the trash and mainlining oxygen no more babycakes! Time to do it yourself! Yes, I know we gave Junior zero warning that suddenly this hole in your heart  would have to close up and the heart suddenly have to change form and function, but it needs to happen now, immediately…if you want to survive!

I hope you got the gravity of what just happened. I hope you understood that no child would survive if their heart did not suddenly change its way of transporting oxygen by changing form and function the instant he took his first breath. 

NO. CHILD.WOULD. SURVIVE.  

God in His perfect, omniscient creation made the heart to do this –the.very.first time. Junior did not have the luxury of waiting millions of years while evolution fiddled with the DNA so this could happen. Junior had a few seconds…to breathe or not to breathe. To survive or not to survive.

My son took his very first breath and turned a lovely shade of pink. He did not give the usual scream of indignation that babies usually do when presented to this cold, loud world. Maybe he knew his Mama would figure out a way to dote on him and still give him almost every thing he needed. Maybe the hour of me relaxing in the the jacuzzi made him mellow too. He's a smart one, my boy J.

I am so grateful God made it so that hole in our hearts would be closed up when we took our first breath. I am also grateful that He left a spiritual hole in our hearts. One, that only He can fill. That God shaped hole in each of our hearts.

 Ecclesiates 3:11 says
¹¹ He has ^amade everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot ^bfind out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

In our hearts, we all yearn for that which is outside of us and greater than us. We long to know God, and thankfully just as He provided a way for each newborn baby, he already made a way for us to know Him.

Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, (Colossians 1:15).

So as God lovingly made a plan for us as we were born, he lovingly became man himself, ironically coming as a baby…to fix our hearts…to be our provider…to make a way where He could meet all the desires of our hearts…to give us a way to become part of His family. God alone could fill that hole…and He alone could fill that hole.

Of melodrama, being purebred and cutting your thumb off

One would think that slicing half the nail off my thumb while attempting to chop an onion would result in a geyser of blood  spraying and splattering everything in its path and making the kitchen look like a murder scene.

 When this tragedy happened, I grabbed the offending thumb and emitted a scream so loud I think my neighbors felt a shift in the force.  My husband and kids raced over, dialing 911 as they flew to my rescue to see what body part lay on the floor after such a blood curdling squeal of anguish.

So I showed them my thumb… and as eight eyes looked intently at the severed nail…one tiny drop of blood…slowly and lazily idled its way out. I squeezed it, and shook it and waited for the deluge of arterial, gushing mayhem I just knew was coming. And the one tiny drop sat there…friendless, while my husband rolled his eyes and suggested I get a Bandaid…a small one.

Well, if you’ve read my post on my hating to drink water, you probably know that my body likely did not have any liquid to spare, but still, I was quite miffed that it couldn’t have backed up my melodrama a little bit better. At the same time though, I was glad I wasn’t carrying the mutated gene of many unfortunate members of the early European royal families that rendered their blood unable to clot after even the tiniest cut.

The inbredness (is that a word?) of the European royal family resulted in a mutated gene that seemed to have originated with Queen Victoria, being spread throughout England, Spain, Russia and Germany. (See folks there is a reason you shouldn’t marry your cousins – being purebred only works for roses). 

This mutated gene resulted in one tiny part of the 21 stage cascade of events that causes your blood to clot, to not work properly.

This one tiny change in the DNA caused one tiny protein not to have the right instructions to fold properly, which means it could not interact properly with other proteins and this caused the 21 stage process to come to a grinding halt. For people with hemophilia that means a tiny cut or bruise is potentially fatal…and it was to several princes including Victoria’s own son Leopold, and helped to contribute to the fall of the Russian dynasty when Prince Alexis had it.

It is mind boggling to me that it is believed that our beautifully functioning bodies could have evolved to its state of amazing harmony through random mutations, when we see over and over that one tiny change in DNA is enough to annihilate a system that is critical to our survival. I, on the contrary, believe this is extraordinary proof of a creator and a beautiful design.

Here’s a great animated videofrom Johns Hopkins University. It is awesome in that it is complex and the words make no sense  unless you have a PhD in Biochemistry. But just watching the visual of what happens when blood clots is worth a thousand words!!!!

When I cut my nail off my thumb, the blood vessels near the cut immediately contracted to limit the flow of blood to the injured area.  Under normal circumstances, clots do not happen inside the body. All the necessary parts flow in your blood in an inactive form, yet ready spring into action at a second’s notice. 

When you get cut, a bazillion types of proteins, and calcium and vitamin K and factor this and factor that begin this complicated dance where hands are held and partners are handed off to new partners and the music in the background becomes increasingly animated and the tempo picks up and the flurry of activity becomes a beautiful waltz…

The result of which is that instead of me bleeding to death  and having multiple flashing lights of ambulances at my door as I am carried off amid a flurry of tears and prayers…is that I have a lazy drop of blood and disinterested family and a disgustingly efficient clot that healed up beautifully in a few days. 

I don’t even have a stupid scar to show for it…  but boy am I amazed at the complexity of the music God has made in my body that keeps me alive and praising Him every day.

Genesis 1:31 And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.

Cuz Kool Aid tastes better and showers are overrated...

A former coworker once told me she was pretty sure my organs were stuck to my insides. I had just proudly announced that it was nooooo problem for me to go the entire day without peeing because I really didn’t need to  drink water. Man, how invincible I felt at 25 years old and how naive I was. “Me, drink water – that’s for middle aged people who walk with their 64 ounce bottles everywhere” 

Fast forward about 16 years and though I still hate to drink water, I have become sorely reminded of my dependence on it…and my fascination of it.

Growing up, there really was no reason for me to love water – it didn’t taste as good as Kool-Aid (gotta love sugar), I didn’t swim (cuz virtually no one who grows up in Jamaica can), I couldn’t ice skate (I value my bones in one piece) and showers were over-rated (there was no water pressure in Jamaica so a shower was essentially standing under a trickle). I had good reason to hold it in disdain. 

However, water became one of the main reasons I, as a young agnostic, needed to take a closer look at God. That – and belly buttons, but that is another blog in itself.

I had told a friend in college that the Bible was a bunch of Jewish fairy tales and that the human body was a masterpiece of evolution. I had never really researched it and couldn’t tell you why I believed it but I held very tightly to that belief because acknowledging God meant I needed to suddenly look at life and eternity in a way I really didn’t want to.

Yet, it was my very studies in Biology and Chemistry that made me start to ask questions – a lot of them.

I didn’t know that when my Chemistry professor started going on in his monotonous voice about the “anomalous expansion of water” that it would begin to lead me closer to God.

 Let me back up in case I left you sputtering “ anama-what? anomo – who?”.

The anomalous expansion of water.

Science 101 – solids, liquids and gases. In general, the molecules in gases are far apart and it is the least dense of the three. Liquids are in the middle and solids are the most dense. A solid is more dense than when it is in its liquid state and will sink to the bottom of that liquid.

Pretty standard information. except when you come to water. It’s an anomaly. (see I didn’t make up that phrase – it makes sense because water does something  no other non-metallic liquid does when it is turning into a solid). 

It’s an anomaly – its behavior is just plain strange and abnormal. The only other substances that behave strangely like this are bismuth and antimony and no one really cares where in the periodic table they are!

See, when water gets colder it becomes more and more dense until it gets to 4°C. Unlike other liquids, instead of continuing to contract, it then starts to expand so that ice is actually less dense than liquid water! Scientists can’t completely explain why the hydrogen bonding in water causes it to behave that way.

“ Woop di doo”, you may think. Why is this interesting?

It’s interesting and absolutely vital because it would profoundly affect the survival of  organisms living anywhere water freezes. Simply put, aquatic life would not survive the winter anywhere ice forms if water did not act in this…anomalous way!

Anomalous expansion of water – causes ice to float on top of water. It doesn’t sink to the bottom and kill the fish, and everything that survives under the ice in the winter.

 As one writer puts it:  If water did not have this strange property, the entire pond or lake would freeze solid and fish and other living creatures would be killed, since most animals would have their cells disrupted by the needlelike ice crystals that form in the water within their cells.

Anomalous expansion of water – ensures that the water below the ice is insulated from the colder temperatures above, providing a more livable temperature at the bottom of the body of water.

Anomalous expansion of water- pushes down  oxygen in the water’s surface for use at lower depths for use by the aquatic animals and plants.

It’s a curious fact, this anomalous expansion of water. Taken for granted yet, quite significant. It’s like a whisper in the wind, a little wink from God to remind us of little things He has done for us.

 It beckons us to come and look closer at the delightful things he has left in this world for us to discover Him.

And for one young woman to whom water had little significance, it certainly did.

Romans 1:20  For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse

Permission to share this blog: This blog may be  freely shared provided that it is done in its entirety with the author's name and this blog link placed in the copy. 

Photo courtesy of: pondat38nurseryrd.wordpress.com

My grandmother's gnarly toes...are on MY foot!

My toes could try out for a horror movie. They are long, gnarly and probably have an extra digit. They can pick up objects  well and can give a pretty good pinch. My husband claims he is not afraid of them but I have seen the way he shudders and scoots away when my toes touch him in bed! I can laugh now, but growing up I was horribly embarrassed by my toes and the only thing I loved about them was that they were the same exact toes as someone I loved more than I can begin to explain – my grandmother!

My grandmother was a beautiful woman and I don’t just mean on the outside. She was quite possibly the most generous person I have ever known. She fed the children in her district, she raised more than twice as many children as the 7 she had. In fact for a couple years, she and my grandfather raised me during the week. She was feisty (I felt that she could stand up to anyone). She was smart (she was the village midwife and alternative medicine healer), and she was sweet (she loved my grandfather, her children and the dozens of grand and great grand children she had with a strength I so admire).

But back to her toes. My grandmother had those long, gnarly toes too. I bet my grandfather shied away from them in bed too. My mom however, has stubby little toes on a foot that looks nothing like mine. Those gnarly genes certainly did skip a generation and I am waiting in anticipation to see them one day on a grandchild’s foot since both my sons have taken their short, non descript toes from their father.

So as I admire my toes, I think about DNA and how things like that get transferred from one generation to another. Every cell in my body (except my mature red blood cells) carry the gene for those gnarly toes. The DNA in the cells of my skin, my brain, my bones and yes, the DNA in the cells of those toes all carry that gene as well as all the other genes that program how my body works. But how does that gene get passed down to my kids? 

Well, the DNA in the eggs in my ovaries that with the equal help of the DNA in my husband’s sperm became the blueprint for those delightful little boys we have now. While I’m sure I passed on the gene for the gnarly toes, it appears the genes for my husband’s normal (read: boring!) toes must have won out in what was allowed to show up. My gnarly toe genes must have gone the way of recessive blonde hair genes, only allowed to show up if they can gang up in numbers and there is no other gene to challenge them for the right of showing up on the outside of a person. Yes, I am ashamed to admit, my gnarly toes are from weak genes…sigh.

Evolutionary scientists say that evolution takes place as a result of a random beneficial mutations giving an organism an advantage in surviving and reproducing  more than other less well adapted living things. In fact mutations, random ones, are believed to have caused our grand evolution from “simple” single celled organisms to awesome living things like plants that perform photosynthesis for us all to have food, or amazing creatures like the cheetah, or the bombardier beetle that makes toxic chemicals to scare off predators, or humans like me, albeit with gnarly toes.

Without going into the details of the fact that most random mutations cause deadly or debilitating conditions the vast majority of the time (can you say cancer,cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia etc etc), let’s think about how that mutation would make it to another generation.

Let’s say tomorrow, I undergo a mutation in my DNA. This mutation will change the DNA coding for my gnarly toes. If I am lucky it will code for a change in my bones and make my toes petite and beautiful. More importantly the mutation will not have caused any harm to me so that I survive to have children. Now we have to assume that this mutation took place also in my eggs in my ovaries, because this the ONLY DNA that will have the ability to pass this trait on to a future generation. OK, so my ovaries have eggs with viable mutation. Now, we have to make sure that one of these eggs of the 400,000 or so eggs that a female produces will actually be part of producing another human being. If it isn’t one of these, this mutation doesn’t do diddly as the next generation will not have this new petite toe DNA. Then there are the whole compatibility issues that the changes in the DNA from the female, is compatible with the DNA in the male. (Think of the fact that if you breed a horse and a donkey – though very similar in DNA will result in a mule that is 100% of the time sterile and unable to produce offspring).

So with this new petite toe mutation, I would now need to have another child to pass on this gene. This gene would have to "survive" all the conditions mentioned above to make it to the next generation. Happily, and with a somewhat warped sense of humor I realize the odds of this tiny thing happening is probably as close to zero as you can get, so again I look forward to forming my family club of the future: Girls of the gnarly toed sisterhood!!

Friends, I believe God put plenty of variation in our genes to allow us to be a myriad of beauty for Him and to allow us to adapt and survive under many different situations. My toes may be gnarly but it’s because the Lord God made me that way!




Permission to share this blog: This blog may be  freely shared provided that it is done in its entirety with the author's name and this blog link placed in the copy. 

The EYES have it!!

The playful twinkle in my husband’s eyes were the first thing I noticed about him when we met. It turned out that his eyes were a true reflection of his always laughing, fun loving and kind personality. And it sure didn’t hurt that they were green. I’ve always thought green eyes were rare and amazingly gorgeous.

Our first son has that twinkle too…but with a mischievous glint. I could tell moments after he was born when he picked up his head, looked around the room and gave me a “look out world!” stare. He has charged headlong into life since that day!

When I saw our second son’s eyes, I declared them to be …soulful. Deep in passion and thought. The eyes of the guitarist that strums around a campfire. Sure enough, this is my son who sends us all love notes, is always playing music and is an avid reader at age 5.

How does the eye do that, I wonder? How does it project to the world your intentions and dreams in a single glance? How does it bark orders, say sorry or invite you along for an adventure? And as amazing as just looking at the eye is, it is just the cover page of a much more sophisticated and intricate organ inside.

Evolutionists say that the simple light sensitive spot that allows single celled organisms to detect and move away from light, somehow developed through random DNA mutations into this magnificent organ called the eye. I say:  The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the Lord has made them both” (Proverbs 20:12

Charles Darwin, the father of evolution was himself skeptical of the eye having evolved, and this was before many of the intricacies of the eye were even discovered.  He said:

 “to suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.”

You said it, Charlie – absurd. Took the words right out of my mouth.

Let’s take a quick look at the eye. Remember this overview barely skims the surface of its abilities.

First let’s remember that the eye only functions when all its parts are working, and not till then.

An eye without a lens will not work. An eye without an optic nerve connecting it to the brain will not work. An eye without a cornea will not work. And so on and so forth. Until all the parts of the eye are present and functioning – it will NOT work! 

So why would a one celled organism with a light detection spot continue through completely random mutations, to build an increasingly complex organ, over time, that DOES NOT WORK?!! Evolution cannot plan. It cannot anticipate. It cannot hope. (Oh please, please let this mutation produce vitreous humor to fill the eye, and a cornea to start focusing the light, c’mon DNA lemme see what you got!). Yeah…say it again, Charlie –“absurd”

Scientists call this irreducible complexity. Basically saying, if it were any less complex or unfinished, (say it with me). IT WILL NOT WORK!

Let’s focus instead on a few parts of this amazing finished product: the two globes that act as a video camera always adjusting and focusing so we can see crisply and accurately.

 It has a seamless integration with our brain to allow images to be translated into information we can understand. This requires a complicated system of photo-chemical receptors, electrical signals, specialized cells and more all working harmoniously.

The six muscles attached to the eyes allow for large movements of the eye but also for small imperceptible tremors that shift your eyeball ever so slightly in a fraction of a second, without any effort on your part to allow for accurate focus.

The lens of the eye focus the image on the retina which lines the back of the eye. Special muscles make the lens thicker or thinner to focus an image. Specialized cells in the retina (rods and cones) allow us to see the image in various light levels, and in color.

The eyes have its own windshield wipers (the eyelids) and wiper fluid(tears) which keep the eyes free of debris and clean. The eyelashes (which are not just for batting at someone to flirt), help keep that dust and debris from landing in the eye.

Sounds like someone thought of everything doesn’t it? Sounds like Someone wanted to make us perfectly and wonderfully. Sounds like Someone really cares about us.

I would be remiss if I didn’t add to that …Someone cared about us so much He sent His only begotten Son in the world to die for our sins (John 3:16) and make us blameless before God when we accept that Salvation. Sounds like our amazing God!

If you would like more detailed information on the eye, please visit these websites:

http://www.detectingdesign.com/humaneye.html  (This is a scholarly article detailing and rebutting in a respectful, scientific  manner the argument for the evolution of the eye)

http://www.creationmoments.com/content/micro-marvels-human-eye-0  A short simple look at some highlights of the eye, especially the complex retina

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v3/n3/seeing-eye  A short, interesting overview of the eye from a creation perspective.

Permission to share this blog: This blog may be  freely shared provided that it is done in its entirety with the author's name and this blog link placed in the copy.