NAVIGATION

        college encounter  ::  a ministry of the chapel hill bible church

: tina goss

I have a story.  I’m majoring in biology and so I love science and learning about how God created our bodies to function in such amazing ways.  So I was sitting in my neurobiology class one day and we were learning about the senses.  Generally with the senses, your neurons let your brain know what’s going on- what you’re seeing, smelling, hearing etc.  All of your neurons have an electrical potential that’s negative.  When they receive a stimulus (ie a sound wave entering your ear causing your ear drum to vibrate) they become very positive and send their signal to your brain.  All of the senses work the same way in that the “resting state” of the cell, or the state at which the neuron is stuck with the negative electrical potential, is in the absence of the stimulus.  In other words, the cell is at rest with its negative electrical potential when you don’t hear a sound, and when you’re not smelling or touching anything.  All of the senses work that way- except for sight.  One would guess after what I have previously described that the resting state of the neurons you use for vision would be in absence of the stimulus, or when it’s dark.  And then when your eye saw light, this would cause the neuron to send its signal.  But the crazy thing is that this isn’t how it works at all.  The resting state of the neurons for your eye is actually in the presence of light.  So I bet you’re wondering where on earth I’m going with this. 


Well, when I first heard this it just blew my mind and I was so unbelievably excited that I called Frances right after class and left her a voicemail.  I felt like God was speaking to me right through the professor’s lecture.  So if the resting state of the optical neurons is in the light, that means that your neurons are supposed to be in the light, that’s what they were biologically designed for.  Darkness is a weird phenomenon that happened when maybe it wasn’t supposed to and so your eye has to let your brain know that something different is going on.  So my mind went straight to Christ, and how we are made for him.  We were designed to be in his light, to witness his glory and praise him forever and ever.  I thought of all of the scripture that speaks about light and how the imagery is used to help us understand who God is and what this means for our lives.  This passage from John is just one that talks about Christ being the light of our world, and how radically different this light is from the darkness.


1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning.  3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.  6There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. 8He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. 9The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. (John 1:1-5)


    What I learned in my neurobiology class that day was for me an amazing testament of how we were created to be God’s people.  We were not designed to be in this world of darkness, surrounded by evil and sin, but have been made to live in Christ’s holy and glorious light.  I was just blown away by finding in our picked-apart, skeptical and scientific world, such a tangible and real illustration of God’s design for us.  For me this was a reminder that we don’t belong to this world, but we belong to Jesus.  That experience really encouraged me to know that yeah, God does have it all together, in ways that we have not even come to realize.