Author: Jim Meredith

Jim Meredith is a retired U.S. Army Colonel who was born in Marion, Indiana in 1934. He holds degrees from Wheaton College (IL) and the University of Cincinnati. He completed 31 years of military service, including two combat tours in Viet Nam. He retired in 1987. Following lengthy Pentagon service and attache duty in Greece, his final assignment was as Department Chairman on the faculty of the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, PA. Following retirement, he was initially involved in government relations activities in Washington, D.C. Thereafter he became President of the American National Metric Council, Board Chairman and Executive Director of Military Community Youth Ministries and then Director of International Expatriate Ministry for Young Life, retiring in 2001. Jim lives in Colorado Springs with Barbara, his wife of nearly 65 years. They have been blessed with four children, nineteen grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. Jim is an active retreat leader and speaker.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made…A Pause for Thanksgiving

Jim Meredith

Dear trekker,

While in Florida a few weeks ago, I noticed the following, The Miraculous You, in a doctor’s office. YOU are:

  • 60,000,000,000,000 cells
  • 600 muscles; 206 bones
  • 60,000 miles of blood vessels
  • Kidneys filter 42 gallons/daily
  • Nerve impulses travel 300 ft/second
  • Average person walks 9,000 steps or 8 miles daily
  • A quarter size piece of skin contains:  1 yard of blood vessels; 4 yards of nerves; 100 sweat glands and    3 million cells
  • Daily muscular activity equals loading 24 tons of wheat on a wagon four feet high.
  • Heart beats 70 times/minute, 100,000 times/day, 38 million times/year
  • Each minute you are producing millions of cells.

60 trillion cells! That is a lot of cells. 60,000 miles of blood vessels, all of which automatically clot and save lives every day! Now, at 87, I’m not loading 24 tons of wheat on a four foot high wagon. That’s too much work for an old man…and, I’m not walking eight miles daily, either. But you get the point…“We are all fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14).

These facts cause one to pause. “Made” suggests intentionality, not spontaneous (this is a stretch) generation of an amorphous glob which eventually became a marvelous YOU! Anyone that looks at the watch on their wrist can understand that it was designed with intelligent purpose. Is not the same true of man? The Lord God formed (the) man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). Amazing! Awesome!

Psalm 139 is beloved, I am certain, by many trekkers, and is likely one of the more famous psalms in the Bible. (Trekker, read it now in its entirety before going on.) It’s a lead passage of the entire Bible, laying the foundation of faith! We were made to walk with God in faith and practice! “Your works are wonderful; I know that well” (v. 14). God is pictured as having formed and woven together in his mother’s womb (v.13) the author of this Psalm (likely King David). The womb is also mentioned in verse 15: “My frame was not hidden from you, when I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth.” The mother’s womb is compared to the depths of the earth, as if the womb is a hidden foundation of the miraculous results of God’s fruitful and wonderful works. 

God’s wondrous and awesome works are praised with regularity throughout Israel’s history, as evidenced throughout the Psalms. “I will give thanks to the Lord with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonders” (Psalm 9:1). O God, you have taught me from my youth (I accepted Christ at the age of 15), and I still declare your wondrous deeds (Psalm 71:17). This verse precedes my life verse (from age 60 forward) and is the reason I write Men Passing the Baton: “Oh Lord, even when I am old and gray (and bald), do not let me die until I have passed on the power of God to the next generation, Your might to all who are to come (Psalm 71:18).

Many of you trekkers are the next generation! Another psalm: “We will not conceal them from their children but tell to the generations to come the praises of the Lord, and His strength and His wondrous works that He has done” (Psalm 78:4). All works of the Lord, in creation and salvation following man’s sin, are praiseworthy, designed by our heavenly Father!

Oh how we are fearfully and wonderfully made! The God of all glory knows us, every one of our 60 trillion cells! We live before him and in Him (in salvation), never apart from Him. Our Creator and Redeemer, though unseen so often, is not removed, but is always the unparalleled presence and sustainer of our lives.

Assured of God‘s presence, David seeks (as we must) the Creator’s presence for anxieties and hurtful, sinful ways: “Search me, oh God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful, wicked way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way” (Psalm 139:22, 23). Short accounts are mandatory when all of our ways are open to a God of all-knowing: oh Lord, help me to never stray from you!

When we consider the Maker of our frame, to think of sinning against Him is an obvious and horrible rejection.  That we would use our bodies against His intentions for us is a direct affront to His miracle! That fact is sobering for us trekkers, is it not?

Trekker, we are known in every manner by God. Not only created fearfully and wonderfully, we have been re-created in Christ, indwelt by the Spirit of God himself. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them,” Paul wrote to the Ephesians (2:10). That our works might bring glory to God…this is David‘s, Paul’s and our hope as trekkers!

Fearfully and wonderfully made is indeed a pause for Thanksgiving, this year and every day of our lives. Since creation and salvation history is for the glory and honor of God, or “to the praise of his glorious grace” (Ephesians 1:6), as his children, made in His image, our purpose is to believe and display by our lives God‘s power and love. He has so designed our bodies and our spirits that our very existence should serve to give Him praise.

Pausing in Thanksgiving this year.

Your friend,

Jim Meredith