I lay flat on my back, a hospital pillow tucked under my head. The nurse has started an intravenous line in a small vein in my right hand, so skilled that I felt just a needle prick. I have a blood pressure cuff on my left arm, a pulse oximeter on my index finger, and the nodes of an electrocardiogram on my chest. I watch my heart beat through the green of a monitor – the rhythms jagged on the screen. The monitor tells all: my pulse, my blood pressure, my heart beats, the oxygen level in my system. It is the inanimate, all-knowing object in the room. It searches my body and monitors its activity, but it knows nothing of my soul.
I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Modern medicine can identify many things about the workings of my body and I am grateful. A breast lump caught early gives a woman hope she will enjoy her grandchildren, a polyp identified and taken out means a man can live to see retirement. But only One knows all the goings on in my body.
I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
The nurses and assistants are busy with tasks – I am Preparation Bay 12. “Have you gotten Preparation Bay 12 ready?” says someone who seems to be in charge. I can’t hear the reply but I know the answer because I am Preparation Bay 12. They are kind. They are efficient. But all of us in here are just a part of this day’s work. There is talk of cookies in the break room and laughter from a couple of them recalling something one of their children has done. They will not remember me after I leave today. And that’s okay. Many people enter this place every day. And all day they give of their skills to make sure we who are fearfully and wonderfully made will be well-cared for.
I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Nothing illustrates this more to me than laying here on this hospital bed. I am more than an electronic green rhythm, I am more than a heart beat, I am more than an oxygen level, I am more than a vein. And while the all-knowing monitor can tell so much, it is the creator who really knows what’s going on. The bones, the vessels, the arteries, the muscles, the tendons, the heart, the brain cells. But most of all the soul.
I lay back and sigh. The nurse comes in and tells me about the medicine that she will be giving me through the intravenous line. It will make me sleepy she says. I probably will sleep through everything and wake up in another room. The last thing I think of before I drift off is that I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;your works are wonderful, I know that full well.* From Psalm 139:14
