A Science Lesson

I love learning new stuff.

Which is a good thing, because I'm doing a whole lot of that lately. Twenty years after receiving my teaching degree I finally have a classroom of my own. Trained to be a high school English teacher, I had to laugh at God's mischievous choice of placing me in a 6-8th grade classroom teaching pretty much everything EXCEPT English.

While I consider myself a human of at least moderate intelligence and awareness, I am shocked daily by the things I don't know.

For example, did you know that glaciers are totally cool? Pun not in the least intended. Well, maybe a little bit. And did you know that the United States owns Puerto Rico?? You probably did. But I didn't.

And then there's the mysterious pi (I actually know what it means now!), the infinite awesomeness of maps and the comical War of 1812 involvement of Mackinac Island. All new and so very interesting.

The newest, most intriguing entry in the Things I Didn't Know category involves bodies. We are in the midst of a Human Biology and Health unit in 7th-8th grade science. (The reproductive system comes up in a week or two - pray for me.)

What an absorbing and mysterious subject it is, learning about what is inside the human body. So far we have marveled at the strength of bones, the resiliency of muscles, and the many functions of the epidermis.

The current lesson is about the circulatory system. Want to guess how many times your hearts beats in a day? A hundred thousand times! Doesn't that just beat all? (Sorry, couldn't resist.) Every day since before you were born it has kept pumping away, never tiring, never complaining, never asking for a break. Such a miracle. How, I wonder often, can one look at the marvels inside the body and say there is no Creator?

But that's not my point. It's just a bonus side thought.

The thing I really wanted to tell you about is red blood cells.

Okay, so the job of the red blood cell is to zip through your lungs, pick up some oxygen, and then truck around your body delivering its cargo wherever it might be needed. Your body has lots of red blood cells - about 37 trillion of them. They look like little red doughnuts. But here's the part that really got my attention.

Every second - every second mind you - two MILLION of your red blood cells die.

That thought absolutely creeps me out.

Eventually those dead cells are recycled into new living cells - the job of the spleen, I believe - but that still means that all the time, every moment of the day, I am walking around with millions and millions of dead things in me.

I am full of life. And yet I am full of death. It is in me, in every part of me, inescapable, a part of my very definition. The thought gives me the shivers. Makes me want to somehow swat at myself with a rag the way I would at mold, trying not to touch, cringing and saying eww eww eww.

A body full of death. This is what we are.

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Christ Jesus our Lord! Romans 7:24-25a

It gives me the shivers sometimes, thinking about how much there is in me that I don't want to have there.

I probably look like a pretty decent person from the outside, at least of average good-ness. But I know what lies within. I know the urges, the weaknesses, the pride-driven selfishnesses that race around my insides, making mockery of that which looks like goodness from the outside of my skin.

It helps a little, I guess, to remember that I'm not alone. We all live in bodies of death. The person next to me who seems so good - they, too, are full of that which makes them cringe.

Who will rescue us? Who will take this thing that is so full of wrongness and make it right?

Thanks be to God through Christ Jesus our Lord. You know the answer. The kids in Sunday School know the answer. It's Jesus. Only Jesus.

He takes this evil that is within me, and with the shedding of His own dear blood He makes my ever-thumping heart pure and good in the eyes of my Heavenly Father.

And icky, creepy, inescapable death is replaced with life, flowing to every part of me and delivering the fresh air of forgiveness.

So I guess what I'm saying is...Jesus is sort of like a spleen.

See? You learn something new every day.

Ownership and Belonging

But now thus says the LORD, He who created you, O Jacob, He who formed you, O Israel: "Fear not, for I 

have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.  Isaiah 34:1, ESV

Some years ago our family traveled to Texas to attend the baptism of my newest niece. I was excited to meet little miss Maya, to see if she looked like her mom or her dad and to aah over the tinyness of her toes. Of course, all the other relatives were anxious to meet her, too, and the poor girl was bounced around the room from one set of arms to another from the moment we all arrived.

After waiting my turn for several hours, I finally found a quiet moment to gently lift Her Babyness out of her mother’s arms and settle into the couch to have a good look at her. As I marveled at the exquisite perfection of her miniature facial features, my own little girl, all of three years old, came sidling over to us. Emmalyn gazed seriously at her cousin’s face tucked into the crook of my arm, and then looked up at me with a concerned pucker between her eyebrows. With gravity she announced, “You don’t belong to her. You belong to US.”

That sounds about right. I’m pretty sure my kids do think that I belong to them. Like any mother, I have also done time as the cook, the maid, the teacher, the playmate, the chauffeur . . .  The children seem genuinely surprised when I point out that I’m actually not here to be at their beck and call.

Emmalyn was wrong. I don’t belong to her. I’m the parent, after all. In her three year old world, I was all-powerful, all-knowing, provider and protector, creator and judge. I'm the mom. She cannot own me.

No, she had it backward. I don’t belong to her, but rather, she belongs to me. She is my child. I give her more than she can ever see. I love her more than she will ever know. Nothing can ever change the fact wrapped around my heart that she is my daughter, my precious one.

That afternoon in Texas I was focused on my niece and didn’t take time to reassure my concerned daughter, but I wish I had. I wish I’d smoothed her cheek with my thumb and leaned down close to her brown eyes and said, “You are my child. Forever and ever, you belong to me.”

. . .

I’ve taken my turn at being the owner-child. Sometimes I act like God belongs to me. I speak to Him with request after request – help me, get me out of this jam, make it all better – and am surprised and a little offended when everything doesn’t go my way. I take for granted that He’s always there, waiting until I’m ready to make use of Him before calling His name and defining our relationship by my own terms.

It’s ludicrous to say that God belongs to man. God is God and I am merely me – a small, small speck on a spinning globe. God does not belong to me . . . but I belong to Him. How can those words be uttered without a gasp of amazement and a shudder of humility? I belong to Him. And not because I say, here I am, Lord, lookit me, I’m here for you, big guy. No, I’m His because He chose me. I am His child because my brother Jesus died in my place, was separated from His Father so that I might become a daughter.

. . .

Before the big day my brother Todd asked us about baptism etiquette. He thought it made most sense for the mother to hold the baby during the ceremony, but we convinced him that it is standard procedure for the godmother to do the holding. (As the godmother in question, I was definitely in favor of this protocol.)

But that Sunday morning, as I held my niece while the water was poured over her head, I knew that it was not in fact her godmother holding her, and not her mother or even her father. At that moment she was held with utmost care by her Heavenly Father. He gazed down lovingly and said to her, as He said to me at my baptism and you at yours, “You are my child. Forever and ever, you belong to me.”

First published in The Alpena News, February 7, 2015