This was written in February 2018
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (Ps 139:13-16).
Humans are incredible creatures and wonderfully made by God. The complexity of the human body is amazing. There are so many processes that happen within one single cell to make it function that it is mind-blowing to think about it. I am no biologist, but when I read biology books I am fascinated. The human mind is also incredibly complex. Neuroscience is discovering more and more amazing features of the brain every day.
However, the downside of the fearfully and wonderfully made human body and brain is that humans are incredibly fragile. The more complex the creation, the more possibilities there are that something will go wrong. Dementia is one of those things which can go wrong with the human brain. In a way, the existence of dementia is a testament to the fact that humans are fearfully and wonderfully made. If we were not, then there would be no capacity for us to break in this way. Therefore, dementia cannot diminish the reality that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.
Knowing that humans are fragile and mortal, God has compassion on his people. “As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD’s love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children’s children—with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts” (Ps 103:13-18).
Human beings were created from the dust of the earth (Gen 2:7) and because we sin we die and return to dust (Gen 3:19). The fearfully and wonderfully made human is in one sense just dust made into an incredibly complex biological machine. Our lives are fleeting like the grass that grows and dies and is blown away by the wind. This all seems rather depressing if you do not remember the love of God. For those who belong to the LORD and fear him, he is a compassionate Father who loves us. God knows that we are dust and our lives are short and fraught with difficulty. But his compassion and love are not limited; they are eternal. No matter that human bodies and brains, so beautiful and yet so breakable, stop functioning properly and then die. The love of God cannot die.
The Son of God also shared a body made of dust, destined to perish. Jesus accepted death for our sakes. But God raised him from the dead. Now he is even more fearfully and wonderfully made, with a body that can never die. The fearfully and wonderfully made humans of dust will share the glory of that new body with Jesus, if we have trusted in him. “The first man [Adam] was of the dust of the earth; the second man [Jesus] is of heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man” (1 Cor 15:47-49).
Humans did not evolve from the dust into something amazing. We were created by an amazing God. And he created us in our fearfully and wonderfully made bodies because we have a destiny that goes beyond anything which you would expect of something made of dust. Humanity was created to fellowship with God, to share in his life. We were made to share the joy of the relationship between the Father and the Son in the Trinity.