Letters From Grandpa #491

• LETTERS FROM GRANDPA
• 491

Dearest grandchild,

Today’s letter will deal with the resurrection of your body. Our present pains and distress will someday be replaced by a new body “redeemed” from the grave. Paul wrote: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.” (Romans 8:22-23)

The more science reveals about the human body, the more amazing is the concept of a resurrection. The human body has 206 bones and 600 muscles. There is approximately 30 lbs. of blood in the average adult. The heart is 6 inches in length and 4 inches in diameter. It beats 70 times per minute or 36,792 times every year. All of your blood passes through the heart in only 3 minutes. This means that every day your heart pumps 7 tons of blood.

On an average we breathe 1,200 times per hour, inhaling during that time 100 gallons of air. This computes to 2,400 gallons every day. The aggregate surface of the air cells in your lungs exceeds 20,000 square inches. This is equal to the size of a floor in a room that is 12 feet square. The atmospheric pressure being 14 pounds per square inch, a medium sized person is subjected to an atmospheric pressure of 40,000 pounds.

Each square inch of skin contains 3,500 sweat glands, or perspiratory pores. Each of these pores is like a miniature drain pipe, microscopic in diameter and ¼ of an inch long. If all of these little drain pipes, or pores, were connected together they would make a pipe nearly 40 miles long.

Donald H. Andrews in his article The New Science and the New Faith makes the human body seem even more amazing by reminding his students that the average body contains an OCTILLION atoms. This is a “1” with “27” ciphers! In order to help us wrap our minds around this number he suggests that we consider every atom in our body to be the size of a pea. He then continues that a million peas would fill a refrigerator. A billion would fill a small house from cellar to attic. A trillion peas would fill every house in a city of 10,000. A quadrillion would fill every building in the city of Philadelphia. A quintillion would cover the entire state of Pennsylvania with peas 4 feet deep. A sextillion would cover all of the land area on earth with peas 4 feet deep. A septillion peas would cover the surface of 250 planets the size of earth 4 feet deep. An OCTILLION peas would cover 250,000 planets the size of earth 4 feet deep.

So your body is composed of an octillion atoms. They function like a gigantic symphony with an octillion musicians. If millions, or billions of musicians leave the stage others immediately take their place. The Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, has calculated the speed of this turnover: “About a third of our body mass is fluid outside of our cells, such as plasma, plus solids, such as the calcium scaffolding of bones. The remaining two thirds is made up of roughly 30 trillion human cells. About 72 percent of those, by mass, are fat and muscle, which last an average of 12 to 50 years, respectively. But we have far more, tiny cells in our blood, which live only three to 120 days, and lining our gut, which typically live less than a week. Those two groups therefore make up the giant majority of the turnover. About 330 billion cells are replaced daily, equivalent to about 1 percent of all our cells. In 80 to 100 days, 30 trillion will have replenished—the equivalent of a new you.”

Jesus once told His disciples: “If I have told you of earthly things and ye believe not, how shall you believe if I tell you of heavenly things?” The point is, our earthly body is amazing, but our new heavenly body will even be much more amazing!

The Human Genome Project began in October 1990 and was completed in April 2003. The genome is the entire set of DNA instructions found in a cell. The human genome contains roughly 3.2 billion letters. Reading these letters day and night without stopping would require approximately 100 years to read them all.

Here is the way J. B. Phillips translates Romans 8:18-25: “In my opinion whatever we may have to go through now is less than nothing compared with the magnificent future God has planned for us. The whole creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the sons of God coming into their own. The world of creation cannot as yet see reality, not because it chooses to be blind, but because in God’s purpose it has been so limited—yet it has been given hope. And the hope is that in the end the whole of created life will be rescued from the tyranny of change and decay, and have its share in that magnificent liberty which can only belong to the children of God! It is plain to anyone with eyes to see that at the present time all created life groans in a sort of universal travail. And it is plain, too, that we who have a foretaste of the Spirit are in a state of painful tension, while we wait for that redemption of our bodies which will mean that at last we have realized our full sonship in him. We were saved by this hope, but in our moments of impatience let us remember that hope always means waiting for something that we haven’t yet got. But if we hope for something we cannot see, then we must settle down to wait for it in patience.”

“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” (Romans 11:33)

I love you,

Grandpa Boyce