Designer of the Human Brain

Boggles the mind

Three pounds of grey matter, pinkish-beige jello. 200 billion neurons with 125 trillion synapses in the cerebral cortex.

It’s the computer that I operate at my will. It’s hotwired into my nervous system. Through it, I have access to 5 basic sensory systems: 3-D camera, touch (never duplicated), sound receiver, taste (never duplicated), smell (there are intelligently designed odor scanners, but none can touch a dog’s nose). Neurons, chemicals, information storing molecules  all part of a cerebral internet that relays and coordinates information by electrical impulses.

My brain stores information, 2.5 petabytes (one million gigabytes). It can: produce images, do math, formulas, and other abstract calculations, and remember all of it. It has an image generation program and an image-altering program. It’s a dream machine, I can daydream, which I control, but I have night dreams, which I do not control. I do not write the scripts but am cast as a player in each completely irrational scene that my conscious mind did not create. It also has a problem solving program and a language acquisition device. It’s all chemical and tissue, developed in my mother’s womb over 9 months.

But all this is only the tip of the iceberg in the mystery of the brain. Somewhere in my head dwells my self, my spirit, my soul, my consciousness, the one at the controls. You could call it my will or my personhood. Not so easily explained by chemistry. All the above data, impressive as it is, would be meaningless if there weren’t “someone” to run the programs and interpret the results. I can play anything I want on the “screen” inside my mind. No photons are involved. I just think and see something, or I think I see something.

In the six days of creation, God did not create my brain. He created Adam’s brain and Eve’s. After that, brains were reproduced in the billions over thousands of years. What kind of Mind could design and produce such an instrument? He breathed life into mud and the result was a “living soul,” not to mention a human body, of which the brain is only one small but phenomenal part. No, in this meditation you’re not going to understand the Maker or the brain, but you may get a glimpse.

Not intelligently designed, say some.

Immeasurable

Isaiah 40

Verse 12, “He has measured off the heavens with His fingers.”

Verse 28, “No one can measure Him.”

Healing Virtue

Desperation reaches, stretches…

Healing of any kind is a mystery, but that’s no surprise because the human body is a mystery: its complexity, multiple functions and systems, why it works at all.  The body is pre-programmed to monitor itself, heal and repair itself, fight off invaders, keep everything according to original specifications. Of course, the body, like all creation, is under the curse, the universal law of decay. Separated by sin from our Creator, our molecular structure lacks the power to renew itself, and so it breaks down slowly, even though it was “fearfully and wonderfully made.” It is a strange contradiction that we were made in the image of God, but we die (Psalm 82:6-7).

To solve this paradox, the Creator God takes on human flesh and is anointed by God the Holy Spirit and in the power of the Spirit heals the sick. One day, Jesus is en route to heal a 12-year-old girl. He is swamped by disciples and curiosity seekers. In fact, the huge crowd is pressing in from every side.

A desperate woman who has been bleeding internally for 12 years, weak and pale, crawls through the crowd among the moving feet and legs. She has missed the opportunity to talk to Him face to face, but if she can just touch Him, even the fringe on His robe…

She does.

At that instant, “healing virtue,” the power of the Holy Spirit (the Holy Spirit Himself?) flows from Jesus into the woman and instantly she feels the bleeding stop. She is healed without going through proper religious channels or asking permission, as everyone else has. She is amazed and joyful but a little worried that perhaps she did something wrong. Jesus also feels the “flow” instantly and  turns to reassures her, “Your faith has healed you.”

I enjoy scenes like this, because I like to try to meditate on Bible things that cannot be visualized or understood rationally. That’s how I get “God glimpses.” First, I think about forms of power and energy that we know about, like fire or electricity. Both can be used to cauterize a bleeding wound, but such a procedure would be painful and leave a horrible scar.

Not so with God’s power, the Holy Spirit of Healing Virtue, stops the bleeding and restores the woman’s body to original specifications in the twinkling of an eye. That means that the “power” is not fire or electricity because it is intelligent, carries the knowledge and authority…in fact, the Person of the Creator via a healing “Ointment.” I can’t wrap my finite mind around that any more than I can understand the Virgin Birth, but that’s how miraculous healings happen. That’s a glimpse of Jehovah Rapha, “I am the Lord, your God, your Healer.”

The touch of faith.