Some years ago, in the small town of Chester, lived Mr. Bob on his plot of land. He liked to tinker, and he set out to collect all the old bits and pieces of metal that other people didn’t want. As time went on, Mr. Bob soon had quite a collection of stuff. His wife would comment, “Mr. Bob has a lot of junk!”
People would come from all around when they needed a piece of metal to fix their car, washing machine, fence, plough, or whatever needed mending. Mr. Bob would look through his bits and pieces for what the person needed, and if he found it, he would sell it to them for a good price.
Mr. Bob’s wife called Mr. Bob’s yard filled with his collection a junkyard. She even painted a large sign for Mr. Bob to place over the entrance to his lot that read “Junkyard: All the bits and pieces of metal you might ever need.”
One day the local radio announced that a big storm was brewing near the town of Chester and would be approaching from the sea. In the town the newsboys cried, “Hurricane coming!” as they sold the latest local paper. Weathermen estimated that it was going to be the biggest storm that had ever hit Chester, and there was nothing the people could do to stop it.
Local government officials warned everyone to shutter their houses and shops and move inland away from the coming storm. The people of Chester were quick to obey the warning and locked up their houses securely. They closed their shutters and hammered wooden boards over the windows that were not protected. Then they took their dogs, cats, goats, sheep, chickens, ducks, rabbits, horses, and cows and moved inland away from the coast where the town of Chester sat, and where the hurricane would hit. Everyone in the town of Chester moved. Everyone except Mr. Bob.
Mr. Bob loved his bits and pieces of metal in his junkyard. He didn’t want to leave. His whole life was invested in that junkyard. He wanted to save it if he could. Mr. Bob hid himself under the biggest piece of metal he could find. He was sure he would be safe and sound.
Suddenly, the storm pounded upon the little coastal town of Chester. Houses were blown down and destroyed. Garages were blown open and then torn to pieces by the fierce winds, never to be seen again.
Mr. Bob could hear the wind coming closer and closer to his junkyard. He could hear the rain beating upon his precious bits and pieces of metal. And then the force of the storm hit the junkyard with all its fury!
Big pieces of metal and little pieces of metal were flying in every direction and around and around. Smashing and banging, ringing and scraping, tens of thousands of big and little pieces of metal swirled around and around in the gushing winds of the storm. Then suddenly, the storm stopped!
Mr. Bob had tried to hide himself beneath the largest piece of metal in his yard. But it was to no avail. He, too, had been blown around in the violent winds. And yet, when the winds stopped and Mr. Bob opened his eyes, to his astonishment, he was sitting in the cockpit of a gigantic jumbo jet.
All the bits and pieces of metal were no longer scattered over Mr. Bob’s lot. The mighty winds of the storm had miraculously formed them into a jumbo jet ready for take-off. When the people of Chester returned, everyone cheered and clapped. Mr. Bob was a hero! Hurrah!
But, no, children, that’s not what really happened! All the wind and rain of a big storm like a hurricane or a tornado could never put together the tens of thousands of bits and pieces of metal in a junkyard into a big jumbo jet ready for take-off. A big jumbo jet takes skill, lots of hard work, and plenty of planning and testing to get it just right. A lot of skilled and intelligent people have to work together to carefully put all the right pieces together in the exact place to make a jumbo jet. Even one little mistake might make it impossible for the jet to fly or cause the jet to crash once it did fly. The planners and builders need to be very diligent to get things just right when constructing and assembling such a machine.
When we see something complicated like a jumbo jet, we know it was planned carefully by intelligent people with intelligent minds. Your body is made up of lots of little pieces called cells. There are approximately 37 trillion cells in your body. That’s a lot of cells! It’s more than all those tens of thousands of bits and pieces of metal that Mr. Bob had in his junkyard.
Inside each cell is a tiny program that contains all the plans on how to repair your body and keep it running properly. That tiny program is called the DNA molecule. Did you know that each DNA molecule is more complicated than a jumbo jet or even many jumbo jets put together?
In fact, one scientist estimated that there is so much information in the DNA molecule that if all the information in a pinhead of DNA were put into paperback book form and then those books were piled one on top of another, the stack of books would stretch back and forth to the moon more than 250 times. That’s a lot of information and a lot of reading! Or if we put the books on a pile that goes around the earth, the pile would go around the earth 5,000 times.1 That’s a lot of books!
Just like a jumbo jet could not have been made by a storm passing over a junkyard, so the DNA molecule in our cells could not have been formed by an accident. Sir Frederick Hoyle, a famous British astronomer and mathematician, expressed that mathematically the DNA molecule could not have formed by an accident. The DNA molecule is just too complicated, even if there were billions of years to do it.
We can agree with the words of a famous King of Israel from some 3,000 years ago, King David, who said, “I will praise you, O God, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14 KJV). Do you thank God for how wonderfully He has made you?
Footnote:
1 http://mevakeshlev.blogspot.com/2016/07/dna-wow.html
Authored by Dennis Edwards, based on the writings of Sir Frederick Hoyle.
Designed by Marsha Kallen.
Published by My Wonder Studio. Copyright © 2023 by The Family International