Your Body Self-Repair

James 5:16
“Confess [your] faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”

Let’s take a moment today to look at your body’s incredible system for repairing itself. Suppose you accidentally cut your finger. Almost instantly, a series of precisely ordered steps begins to repair your finger.

First the bleeding must be stopped. While the scab is forming over the surface of the wound, the blood below is making another kind of clot out of blood platelets and protein. With the bleeding stopped, your body increases the flow of blood enriched with white blood cells. These not only search out and kill germs, but they clean the wound of damaged cellular tissue. Skin cells begin to increase the rate at which they make new cells in order to bridge the cut with new skin. Underneath, cells called fibroblasts fill the wound to strengthen the tender new tissue, and contract to pull the wound closed. Now blood vessels and nerves complete their repairs as the fibroblasts position themselves along the lines of stress to prevent future damage.

The intelligence in the order in which the steps to healing take place, as well as the advanced biochemistry involved in making those steps happen, makes the healing of a cut finger no less of a miracle than Jesus’ healing of the high priest’s servant’s ear. Healing is clearly His doing, whether it happens slowly or instantly!

Prayer:
Dear Father, I confess that I am often too busy to notice how evident Your working is around me. Open my eyes to Your activity and increase my faith. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

Notes:
“How a Wound Mends.” Science Digest, May 1983, p. 86. Photo: Hand abrasion 32 minutes after injury.