Your Fail-Safe Heart

Psalm 75:1
“Unto thee, O God, do we give thanks, [unto thee] do we give thanks: for [that] thy name is near thy wondrous works declare.”

Your heart will beat some 100,000 times today. That’s over 36 million heartbeats a year and over 2.5 billion times in a 70-year life span.

A healthy heart ticks along, producing beat after beat, whether we are awake or asleep. If we become more active, the heart increases its beating to meet the increasing needs of the rest of our body. Doctors tell us that it’s amazing how few of these beats are faulty. They say that it’s perfectly normal for even a healthy heart to produce an occasional irregular heart beat. Sometimes an irregular heartbeat is noticeable, but most often it’s not. Doctors say that when your heart seems to skip a beat, it has really only beat prematurely. The premature beat leaves a pause before the next regular beat, making it feel as if your heart skipped a beat.

The clockwork precision of the heart’s continuing beats is controlled by a built-in pacemaker. The pacemaker, called the sinus node, is a group of cells in the heart’s upper right chamber. However, research has shown that every cell in the heart is able to send the electrical signal needed to produce a heart beat if the sinus node fails. Using highly complex computer models, medical researchers have only begun to understand within the past few years, the electrical action within the heart.

The human heart is much more than a pump, as once believed. It is also a computer and regulator. Every beat of this wondrously designed biological machine glorifies the Creator Who made it!

Prayer:
I thank You, Lord, that You have so wonderfully designed the heart. I join my mind with my voice in praising and thanking You with my whole heart. Remind me of Your often silent but important blessings when my thankfulness grows cold. Amen.

Notes:
Photo: Low-magnification micrograph of sinus node (center). Courtesy of Nephron – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Nephron.