The Wonders of God’s Creation
Did you ever think how amazing it is that when a person reaches 20 (or near that age) his or her body stops growing? The Creator has wisely arranged this, for if our spines, legs and arms kept growing, what a peculiar assortment of giant people there would be!
However, three parts of our body don’t stop growing — hair, fingernails and toenails. Why is that? Actually it is a kind provision of our Creator. Consider our hair: it keeps dropping off and in time would also be rubbed completely off if new hair didn’t push up through our scalp a little bit every day, which it does at the rate of five or more inches every year. This means that every 20 years more than eight feet of new hair replaces what has dropped out.
But why should our fingernails and toenails keep growing? We can be thankful they do, for nails do get broken or damaged, and if a new supply didn’t grow, the ends of the fingers and toes would soon be exposed to all the painful bumps and accidents now absorbed by the nails. They are really wonderful pieces of armor.
Also think how useful our fingernails are in picking up a coin dropped on the floor, a needle on a flat table top, and many other small things. And without them, how would you untie a knot in a thread, piece of string or fishline? How would you relieve an itch if you had no fingernail to scratch with?
Some may think fingernails and toenails are bone, but that is not true. They, like our hair, are made of a material called keratin which our system produces from the food we eat. How does it get to these specific parts of the body? Our brain is constantly giving instructions to every part, and it’s as though it were speaking to the stomach and saying, “Now as soon as that food is digested, send some keratin up for the hair, send another part to the ten fingernails and still another part to the toenails.” This isn’t just imagination; it’s actually the way our body responds to the brain’s commands! When these instructions are carried out and the new part forms behind the old one, it pushes it out a little, until finally it’s so noticeable that you may find it necessary to trim your hair, as well as those nails on your hands and feet.
This is all part of the Creator’s wonderful arrangements for us, as our opening verse expresses. Each member of the body responds just as He has established. Let us not fail to thank Him daily for providing every little, but important, detail of our bodies. “Giving thanks always for all things unto God.” Ephesians 5:2020Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; (Ephesians 5:20).
ML-01/24/1988