Deity, not diety (unless you're on the Taco Bell menu)

Well, it's a new Sunday morning, and I'm loving it this morning because a cold front it officially on it's little way to College Station, Texas! Although Texas is my favorite place in the whole wide world, it is stinkin' hot here! '

This morning I've been thinking about the divine nature of God, his deity: love and righteousness. He is so good. Without the cross, we would have a much different concept of God's love because of His wrath, which is actually really sad. Sad in that I don't get the severe punishment that I deserve when I sin against an infinitely Holy God, because Jesus did it for me. How could a man allow every bit of sin to enter himself, for my sake? And for yours? I think for a really long time I viewed the cross as a really physically painful situation: the whips, the thorny crown, the heavy wooden cross He had to carry, the nails that struck each wrist, the bloody sweat that seeped from His pores because he was undergoing so much physical pain... etc. What about the fact that our Jesus endured the divine wrath for all that His people ought to have suffered, and He had to be seen before the Creator of the Universe, HIS DAD, with this dirty, ugly, nasty, grotesque FILTH, that was caused not by He, but by me. My Jesus cared enough about me, and you and everyone, that He not only died for us, because that would be empty. People die for people all the time. He didn't just die.. he endured divine wrath. We nailed Him to that cross. That is love. Even worship isn't enough for what He endured on the cross. Worship is honestly the least we can do. The very least!

So at some point in time, we have all been on some type of diet, correct? For me as a runner, I had certain foods I could eat, some that I couldn't but did anyway. Starting a diet is when we make the decision to restrict certain foods from entering our mouth. It's essential eating less for the sake of health. Taco Bell. Taco Bell claims that they have a diet menu. That is about as bogus as a doctor prescribing cotton candy to a diabetic. The point I'm trying to make here is that our relationship with the Lord should never be a diet. We should never limit His presence in our lives. We should be so overly-morbidly-ridiculously obese when is comes to our relationship with the Lord! He should fill us and consume us until we can't fit any more of Him in! His divine nature should have us absorbing every bit of Him that we can. He is so worthy of all of our everything. There is nothing of ours that He is not worthy of.

Galaxies to Microbes (part 2)

So in this past year I have taken Chemistry, Microbiology and Anatomy and Physiology (science, science, science!). These classes focus more on what's happening on a microscopic level, which is a little harder to grasp. I am a visual learner so when someone's talking to me about something I can't see/touch I have a really hard time. I'm going to do my best to convey this material in a very simple manner. Bare with me. Also, this is not supposed to seem like a science lesson. I just want to show how amazing our bodies are.

First I'll start with the basic structural and functional unit of all living organisms: cells. A human cell contains organelles that allow our bodies to "work". The cell contains the nucleus (which holds all genetic material), mitochondria (energy storehouse), cilia/flagella (movement), and lots of other structures but one more that I'd like to touch on are lysosomes. These structures are absolutely amazing because without them, all of the other organelles would be completely useless. Lysosomes digest foreign bodies, so when things that shouldn't be in the cell are in the cell, shazaam!

There are several systems in the body which all work together, including digestive, nervous, reproductive...etc. We don't realize that our bodies are doing all sorts of crazy things right now. If you have eaten today, our body is breaking every bit of that down (unless you ate lettuce, hah), and separating what needs to be used and what needs to leave the body. Our nervous system allows us to move. You're probably thinking "um no, actually skeletal muscles are what allow us to move.." That's what I thought too, but without the nervous system, we couldn't tell our skeletal muscles to work. The nervous system allows us to receive and perceive information.

My favorite is the endocrine system. Our body secretes so many hormones that regulate homeostasis in the body. We have adrenal glands, which produce hormones regulating stress. We have a pineal gland which secretes melatonin, which allows us to sleep at night. It is automatically, automatically!, secreted when it starts getting dark outside. How crazy is that? We don't even control these things! We also have a pancreas. This is organ is so important for maintaining the blood's sugar level. When we consume too much sugar, the body secretes insulin to bring the glucose levels back to normal, (this is how people are diagnosed with diabetes), and when the body's glucose levels are too low, the pancreas secretes glucagon, which builds on glycagon to produce glucose. Most of us probably didn't even know all of this was going on in our bodies because we aren't the ones controlling it. Let's just think for a second here.. There is so much more going on in our bodies than this, but I don't want to fill you with all kinds of facts. The bottom line is that the way our bodies work is amazing. This is not something that was just coincidence. Think about it: We don't have to tell our heart when to beat, nervous system when to store material, senses when to smell, ears when to hear, eyes when to see, bodies when to produce more white blood cells to fight infections, platelets to coagulate and clog leaks in vessels..etc, etc, etc, etc.

The Lord has taken care of all of these things for us :) I am so, so thankful for that because I am very forgetful and would probably forget to tell my heart to beat 60 times a minute.

So I realize that this blog has nothing to do with microbes. That's okay. I still like the title and I think you understand the overall message I'm trying to convey.. I started this blog originally by telling about the structure of bacteria, protozoa and viruses but I realized that I was sitting in class when I was reading it so I started over.

God is creative, and perfect, and I just think He's so awesome for the way He made us. Everything about our bodies point to a Creator! That's excluding the fact that morality is innate (another blog). This has nothing to do with our thought process or anything that sociologists try to trip us up on. Sidenote: I once had a sociology professor tell me that she let her little boy wear pink dresses because he liked them. um, I'm sorry.. WHAT???

The Lord is good and gracious, and again, so creative! If you think I'm a nerd after this blog, well I am. This stuff fascinates me, and I hope you find it just as fascinating. Have a happy day :)

Galaxies to Microbes (part 1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TaLD6nwKGg

This song describes how creative our God is. Please, please listen to the words of this song because they are so true. The more science classes I take, the more I appreciate the beauty of our Creator. In astronomy we talked about the size of the universe, which astronomers estimated to be about 156 billion, yes billion, lightyears wide. Just to put that into perspective, one light year is
9.4605284 × 10¹² kilometers, and for those of you like me who are bad with conversions, the sun is 150 million kilometers away from the earth (which we all know is a really huge distance). Wow.

Now let's talk about our galaxy. Because we live in the interstellar clouds of the Milky Way galaxy (our galaxy), we don't know any exact details about the number of stars, size, etc.. however, since our galaxy is said to look similar to the Andromeda galaxy, we use that as our standard, which we estimate to contain about 200 million stars. Let me remind you that God "calls each of them by name" (Psalm 147:4). Wow... WOW! This gives me goosemountains.

Let's take it to an even smaller scale, our solar system. Everything about our solar system points to a creator and designer, which is why it is absolutely appalling to hear scientists say "we have no idea why this is, but it is!". In a loving kind of way, I want to shake them a little.. sometimes a lot. Anyhow, I'm getting off subject here.. Okay so our planet is perfect in its sustainability for life. Perfect. We are close enough to the sun that we can keep heated, but far enough so we don't burn up. The temperature on mars (our neighboring planet further from the sun) is about -225 degrees Fahrenheit (during the night). The temperature on Venus (our neighboring planet closer to the sun) is about 500 degrees Fahrenheit. We are right in the middle, and although this Texas heat is killing me, life is suitable here. Wow.

So looking at things on an even smaller scale, earth has both day and night. The earth is spinning at a tilt of 23.45 degrees which allows us to have seasons. We all know about the significance of the sun (essential for our survival on so many levels..) but what would happen if we didn't have a moon (probably something we've never really thought about). Gravitational force is the universal attraction between all matter. It is what holds everything together (including astronomical bodies). The moon "tugs" on all nearby things, contributing to this gravitational force. The oceans that the moon is closest to tug in such a way that there is a balanced upward force from the earth and downward force from the moon. Wow.

If all of these things aren't pointing to a Creator, then I'm not real sure we can be friends because it is only realistic to agree that all of this was created by a Designer. This is only on a macroscopic level, and I haven't even hit the surface with these facts. There is so so so so so much more that would just completely blow us away about the creativity in our Designer! Just these few points that I have made show how everything about our solar system is amazing, and perfectly sustainable for life. Everything about our existence was intentional and set into motion by a Creator, and the coolest thing ever (seriously) is that we get to have a relationship with Him. Wow.

I am going to talk about the earth on a microscopic level in the next blog, but would like to forewarn you that I tend to be a huge nerdo when talking about microbial species and how they point to a Creator.

Praise the Lord today for giving us such a beautiful place to live, although this is only temporary. I can't even imagine what heaven is going to be like.. WHOOOOOOP! Lets give God praise today for all that he created!