Knit Together

Science has invested a lot of its energies into showing us just how similar we are to other creatures in God's creation. Man, they say, shares something like 96 or 97 percent of his genes with other primates. On the other hand, there are those who argue intensely that man is an entirely unique creature. 

Close.

The truth is...every man is an entirely unique creature. Each and every human being, regardless of how many components of DNA we share, is his own man, her own woman.

Consider this: medical technology has come a long way in the past several decades. We're at a place now where a little boy just received a double hand transplant from another child, and now, this young boy has two functioning hands of his own. ...except they're not his own. And his body knows they're not his own. They're made of the same components of DNA as the rest of him, but not the same structure. So for the rest of his life, he will take medication to prevent his body from rejecting his new hands. Because we have figured out how to stitch man's pieces together, but we have no idea how to knit.

See, that's what God does. He knits us each together in our mother's womb. He makes us uniquely who we are. Each man may be made from the same threads, but the pattern is unique. What is woven into me is woven in a way that makes me who I am; you couldn't weave another pattern into me. This one's mine. And what's woven into you is the same. It makes you who you are, and you can't just pull in a new pattern.

It's amazing, right? That's why it's so easy to look at science and say, yes. Maybe I do share almost all of my DNA with the monkeys, but I'm nothing like them. I share even more with Bill, and I'm nothing like him, either. I know because if you took one little piece of Bill and tried to stitch it into me, I'd spend the rest of my life rejecting it. By nature. Because inherently, I know that what is sewn is not knit.

You'd think, as each of us walks around our own unique man, our own unique woman, that it would be difficult to find the common ground between us, then. But there is something that flows between us. Always has, and always will. 

It's blood.

If we're made of the same type, you could course my blood through your veins, and your body wouldn't know any different. You could pump your blood through mine, and my heart wouldn't even miss a beat. It doesn't know any different. Because blood is neither you nor me; blood is life itself.

The Bible tells us as much. God warns His people repeatedly about the blood of their sacrifices, about blood among them. Blood is life. Be careful with it. Respect it. Honor it. And then God has poured this life into us, into all of Creation, and it's the one thing that binds us together. It's the one thing that we can share. It's the one part of me I can give to you - the life that God gives. It's the one part of you that you can give to me - life. As God has given you. 

So here we are, trying to figure out how each of us can be our own man, our own woman, and yet share between us the life that God gives. How I can be me and share with you life abundant, and how you can be you and share the same with me. It's tricky. It's hard to figure out how every little thing about each one of us, even the things that seem to be so similar, can be so incompatible with each other that we instinctively reject it and yet, this shared life churns inside our entirely unique hearts. What do we even do with that?

It's hard to know.

And it must be said that it's not merely our blood that flows between us, but also Christ's blood. Not just life, but life eternal. Life abundant. Maybe that's what makes this whole thing work. Maybe that's what makes me look at the pattern God has knit in you and know that no, it's not my pattern, but it's beautiful. Because I see the life flowing through it. So you're beautiful. And I hope that you can look at me and see the same. The threads are the same - simple little strands of human DNA - but the pattern is perfectly unique. It's not your pattern, and it wasn't meant to be; this one is mine. But life flows through it just the same. So I'm beautiful.

So we're all beautiful in this most incredible way.

And isn't that something?