Life — Truly a wonderful gift
In English life is spelt with only four letters and yet, what could we have done without it? This article could not have been written without it, and neither would you have been reading this piece if you did not have life in you.
Advertisement
Our Creator has made sure life is perpetuated on earth. He put the earth at just the right location in the universe: If our earth were a little farther away from the sun, we would all have frozen to death. A little closer and we would all have been scorched to death. If our earth were farther into our solar system, we would have been grappling with intense radioactivity, jeopardising our life. Fortunately, our earth is on the periphery of our solar system where radioactivity is subdued.
One of the giants of science Albert Einstein could not have expressed it better when he said: “I cannot believe that God plays dice with the cosmos” (in other words God has made sure the universe is as stable as can be). Another scientist J. Jeans commented: “The universe appears to be designed by a pure mathematician.” Principles of pure mathematics of a high order govern the structure of our universe. God’s mathematical precision has brought about an earth that is stable and sustains life.
High above the earth is the ozone layer that filters out most of the harmful ultraviolet rays from sunlight, before they reach the earth. What a sad commentary that man’s greed, lack of foresight and sheer recklessness have resulted in the emission of great quantities of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that keep trapping heat on earth and destroying earth’s stratospheric ozone blanket!
The earth’s atmosphere has just the right composition of gases to sustain life: 21 per cent oxygen, 78 per cent nitrogen, with one per cent comprising other gases. We need to breathe in oxygen in order to live. Without it death would result in minutes. If there were only oxygen in the air, fires could start very easily on earth because oxygen is chemically very active. The risk is, however, greatly reduced, since other gases are present in air, diluting the oxygen, as it were.
We breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Plants utilise the carbon dioxide along with water, sunlight and chemicals from the soil to produce food in a process called photosynthesis. Oxygen is released in the process, which is just the gas animals and humans need to live. Thus plants depend on humans and animals for their supply of carbon dioxide while the latter depend on the plants for oxygen. What remarkable harmony there is in creation for the perpetuation of life!
In addition to air, we need food and water to live. The Bible sums it up beautifully in these words: God does “good, giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying you with food and filling your hearts with gladness” (Acts 14:17). And Acts 17:25, 28 adds: “He [God] himself gives to all people life and breath and all things. . . . For by him we have life and move and exist”.
How did it all start?
At conception the male sperm fuses with the female egg and fertilises it. Programming extraordinary goes into effect. The fertilised egg automatically starts to divide to become two cells, which in turn divide to become four. The four cells divide to become eight cells and so on till there are an estimated 60 trillion (60,000,000,000,000) cells in a full-grown human!
While the cells are dividing in the womb, a process of specialisation also starts—cells taking special characteristics and shape to form eyes, nose, brain, muscles, heart, liver, skin, lungs and so on. Each group of cells is characteristically different from the other, depending on which body part is being formed. These groups of cells must form at the right places so your heart would always be found at the left side of your body and not on the right; your nails must form on your fingers and toes, and not on your knees; blood should be liquid so it can circulate freely in your body; eyes should form at the front of your head and nowhere else!—I challenge you to cite all the other examples, if you can.
Inside the womb
When the foetus was in the womb, there was a hole in the wall of its heart. The heart has right and left chambers and the wall separates the two chambers and keeps much of the baby’s blood from going towards the lungs. Additionally, a large vessel makes most of the blood bypass the lungs. This is the condition in the womb.
When the baby is born, however, all the blood must immediately flow through the lungs, including blood in the large vessel that bypassed the lungs while the foetus was in the womb. How is the change of the pathway of the circulating blood accomplished? In seconds, after birth, the big vessel, that bypassed the lungs, constricts and the blood that went through it now goes to the lungs. The hole in the wall of the heart also closes and all the blood now goes to the lungs to be oxygenated. The baby breathes, and the lungs put oxygen into the blood for circulation in the body. What remarkable life-saving programming on the part of our Creator! How we ought to love him with our whole mind, our whole heart, our whole soul and our whole strength!—Mark 12:30
Amazing, too, is the fact that, although the body normally rejects foreign tissues, it makes an exception for the developing embryo. Instead of rejecting this genetically foreign embryo, the womb rather nourishes it continuously for nine to 10 months till the baby is born. I shudder to think of the womb rejecting you or me back in time! We would not have been born!
Wonderful developments take place while the baby is in the womb. A single mistake could spell disaster for the baby in the womb or at birth. The fact that, despite human imperfection, by far the majority of babies are born sound in health testifies to the sturdiness of the Creator’s handiwork.
Safeguarding our life
The above is only an infinitesimal testimony to the wonder that life is. Since human life is far superior to all other forms of life on earth, it is in our best interests to safeguard it. Let us cooperate with the systems within us and avoid excesses in food and drink. When it comes to food, this advice is apropos: “Eat little in order to live long to eat more.” This is not to say that you should eat little amounts of food. Rather, eat enough, but not gluttonously, and, hopefully, you should live long to eat yet more food. Leading a godly life tops all the advice, for this improves the quality of life and draws us closer to our grand Creator.
When I contemplate the fact that I was but a tiny fertilised egg in my first home, the womb, and the programming extraordinary that gave me birth, and all the countless processes taking place within you and me even now, yes, the mechanisms that our ever-loving Father Jehovah God has put in place to sustain life, I can only exclaim: Life, oh what a wonderful gift!
