Life Will Find a Way
Jurassic Park is one of my favorite movies. For a lot of reasons but it was the first R rated movie I ever saw. My grandfather took me to see it in the theaters. I was 5! So, to say it impacted me is a grand understatement. But that one line, “life will find a way” has been a defining principle in my life. If you recall, the scientists were describing how they were able to bring dinosaurs back to life. They use the DNA and they breed all of the dinosaurs as female so they cannot reproduce in the wild. Then Jeff Goldblum expresses his concerns about “playing God” and he closes his argument that “life will find a way.” Truer words have never been spoken. Without spoiling the movie too much, life did find a way, and 6 movies later there’s dinosaurs running wild all over the world!
I am often in awe of nature. God truly made a miraculous world. It seems like every day we discover some amazing aspect of the natural world that we previously thought impossible. We used to think that germs like viruses and bacteria were all bad and deadly but we now know that they are essential to life on earth. And recently we found that plants communicate with animals via their genes. Plants can sense when the environment is changing, they alter their genes, the animals eat the plants and gather the information from the genes, and next thing you know, a million wildebeest are migrating across the plains of Africa because some grass told them to! But the most impressive part of nature is its ability to adapt.
Earth has gone through a lot since the beginning. It’s been hot, it’s been cold, there’s been floods, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, dinosaurs, humans. The Earth has seen it all. Yet it’s still here, because through it all, nature has adapted. It doesn’t matter what is thrown at it, nature adapts to survive. In our arrogance we humans think we are destroying the planet. It’s not true. We are definitely CHANGING it but we cannot destroy it. Life will find a way! Think of all the ancient civilizations. The people that lived thousands of years ago. They made a huge impact on the plant. They cut down forests, slaughtered animals, and built massive structures. Yet today there is barely a trace of them. Some are buried under layers of earth, some are under the sea, some are encased in cooled volcanic lava, and some are hidden deep if forests. Nature persisted long after the humans because it adapted.
2020 showed us Nature’s ability to adapt and survive in real time. Since we were forced to shut down our world, it shut down travel, shipping, and reduced pollution almost overnight. In just a few short months, without humans making matters worse, nature sprung into action. Rivers and lakes started clearing up, animals migrated across the planet freely, forests and animals started coming back from near extinction. Without humans to interfere the Earth was able to get back on track. Life found a way.
Its nice to know that the Earth will be just fine without us but what does that have to do with health? It has everything to do with health! That same incredible ability to adapt lives inside each and every one of us! And just like the Earth, if humans would just get out of the way our bodies would heal and thrive exactly how God intended them to. We live exactly the opposite of how we were created. We were meant to be upright, moving around, eating God made food, and breathing fresh air. Instead, we fill our bodies with man-made garbage and chemicals, sit all day, staring at screens under artificial light. BUT your body is so incredible that it adapts to all the harm you do to it. Life finds a way! So next time you feed yourself that toxic chick fil a sandwich and a coke laden with sugar and chemical colorings, while sitting on your iPhone, thank your body for adapting and keeping you alive for another day! See you in the bay!
In Health and Faith,
Dr. Marc
