Knit together
By J. Scott Bryles
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” (Psalm 139:13-16, NIV).
I remembered watching my mother knit when I was a boy. She
would take yarn and transform it into beautiful blankets. But I couldn’t
imagine what knitting had to do with creating life.
I was driving home thinking about that passage from Psalms
when God gave me three little letters: DNA. DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is
the genetic material incorporated in each of our cells. Our DNA is unique to
us; it is unlike any other person’s on the planet. It contains the information
that makes us look the way we do and makes our body function the way it does.
In my office at home, I researched DNA online. Within
minutes, I found an amazing picture of a strand of DNA viewed under an electron
microscope. Others may not agree, but it looked like a fiber to me, like one of
the pieces of yarn my mother used in her knitting.
After seeing this, I felt I knew what Psalm 139 means when
it says I was knit together in my mother’s womb. It means God took the genetic
material from my father and the genetic material from my mother, and He knit
that together in my mother’s womb, which is why life really does begin at
conception.
When my mother knitted blankets, she took care to select the
colors of yarn and the pattern she would use so she would know how the finished
product would look. Then she spent many hours carefully knitting the strands of
yarn together so she could create the blanket she desired. The end product was
something to be valued, not something to be treated carelessly or discarded
easily. If my mother considered a blanket worth this much care, how much more
value does God place upon His creations, each and every one of us?
J. SCOTT BRYLES, M.D., lives in Whitehall, Ark.
E-mail your comments to tpe@ag.org.
