Generator of Diversity

This christmas season was filled with two weeks of catching up with friends I haven't seen for 15 years, getting reacquainted with cousins I never got close to growing up, and being surrounded by a constant reminder of the love of family. I laughed at the quirks you notice when you’re with people you haven't spent time with in a while. My mom narrating the entire movie as we watch it on Christmas day, my Amish uncle’s astonishment at my age and warning me not to marry a democrat, my friend rushing into dinner and knocking a martini glass down. I fell deeper in love with the people around me and God and myself. 

My brother and I were talking to a third cousin (or second? Or our grandpa’s brother’s grandson, whoever that would be to us), and he was talking about a revelation he had about white blood cells and what that was for him in relation to the body of Christ. I was thinking how autoimmune diseases occur when white blood cells attack their own healthy cells and tissues and how the body destroys itself from the inside out when that happens. And acceptance and healing of trauma have to be part of this. Autoimmune diseases can occur after unhealed trauma and I had this beautiful encounter where I just was so deeply feeling the acceptance of God in all my flaws I was trying to fix myself from!- and felt so healed after. I digress. I’m sure more to dissect on this later…

 Meanwhile, in this conversation, my brother (who is a brilliant, semi-photographic memory, doctor) was thinking about immunology and the GOD problem. What. 

Generator of diversity. Referred to as the GOD problem in science “involves the random rearrangement of gene segments (variable (V), diversity (D), and joining (J)) within B cells, creating a vast array of unique antibody sequences before encountering an antigen” 

Basically, our immune system is so advanced and adaptive that our cells do a somatic process that forms unique ways to protect the body against never-before encountered antigens. Just thinking about this opens whole new levels to the complexity and depth of how we are created! We literally have “random” sequenced antibodies that are ready to protect our bodies from foreign agents. Not just foreign agents already introduced to our bodies, but protection against NEW antigens.

Solutions already thought of for us.

Crazy. 

I completely nerd out about these things. Merging of science and God.

And am constantly brought back to awe and wonder at God and how he created us and things like the GOD problem