Days of Miracle and Wonder

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Perhaps it is because I was listening to Paul Simon’s Graceland in the car tonight, specifically The Boy in the Bubble, that I was thinking about miracles tonight.  Miracles and science and faith and hope and how they all get mixed up into our everyday lives.  The miracles of science and medicine and modern technology that continue to amaze me.  Especially the ones I have encountered this week.

The miracles that allow us to look inside the human body and see the arteries and veins, how the blood flows, or does not flow, and then fix the problem that we did not even know existed.  I wondered about who figured out how to do all of that  — how they were inspired, what problem they were trying to solve when he or she said “I wonder what would happen if we did this…”

The miracles of science that make it possible for organs to go from one person to another – -to allow us to literally give life.

And who figured out that blood could be donated from one person to another?

Or that muscles can be fixed, or cancer treated?

The list is endless.

There are some who will say that this is science, that there is a reason and an explanation that can be broken down to the smallest equation.  I remember when I was in high school and took AP biology.  I hated the first part – -the part where we did a ton of math – lots of science is math based and I just never got it.  But I loved when we got to cells – -cells I could understand – -I could see the parts and know what they did.  Osmosis was cool, mitosis and meiosis I could explain (even if I still can’t spell it) and as the systems and concepts were bigger, I liked it more.  DNA – -I was fascinated.  I could not do the equations, but I got the concept.  We did the electrophoresis with the gel and saw the bars and the genomes of some DNA (this may explain why I was, and still am a forensic science junkie) and I was hooked.  This was what made us – -made us people and made us unique.  In Chemistry, I loved the labs but could not balance an equation to save my life.  Astronomy…  well, the physics about killed me —  but the telescope, I was and still am in amazement every time I looked through it.  Yes, science can be broken down to the numbers and equations, but for me there was always something miraculous about the cells and the DNA and the stars and the chemicals – -something I could not explain or quantify.  This may be why I talk about God and not science for a living.  Because, to this day, I firmly believe that at the root of the numbers, there is divine inspiration.  I believe that God, through the power of the Holy Spirit is the one who inspired a doctor to transplant the first organs and fix the first knees and place the first stints.  I believe that most of what we call modern medicine – even antibiotics and vaccines – are in fact miraculous.

These are indeed the days of miracle and wonder.