Focus on This

Proverbs 20:12
The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the LORD hath made even both of them.

I need to wear my glasses for distance vision. I read books just with my eyes, but I cannot see things far away clearly.

Inside your eye, there is a lens, which focuses the light from images onto a focal point on the retina—a black surface at the back of the eye. Unlike the lens in a camera, this lens is squashy. It is attached to tiny muscles, that stretch or squash the lens. Presumably, the muscles in my eye are not capable, any longer, of stretching the lens to its thinnest widths. This, like every other deterioration in our bodies, is a product of the Fall. But the working of the eye is something fascinating to us, when we start from a biblical presupposition.

God tells us in Proverbs 20:12 that He made both the hearing ear and the seeing eye. For an eye to see, several mechanisms have to work together. The lens focuses the light on to the retina. As we have discussed, there are muscles to change the shape of the lens, to view objects at different distances. The iris and pupil allow different amounts of light into the eye. Light sensors respond to the light, which falls on them, and the optic nerve transmits this information to the brain. There would have been no purpose in the lens mechanism evolving, if there were no retina, on which to focus the light, or nerve to transmit the signal. But the Bible makes clear that God designed the eye to see, and He did this, with all the myriad important mechanisms required. We are indeed “fearfully and wonderfully made” by God.

Prayer:
We have read, Lord, that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. The more we find out about how You put us together, the more we stand in awe at Your might, and praise Your Name. Amen.

Notes:
Image: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain