August 21, 2026
It’s funny the curious things that pop into one’s thoughts. I hadn’t thought before about how each toe on the foot matches that same one on the other foot. As a fetus grows, how do toes do that? They are, after all, on a different leg. No nerves connect both sets of toes. Yet each toe has the right shape but in mirror form on the other foot. Shoes may cause them to curve in similar ways, but each toe seems to know its proper shape and location. A little toe does not resemble a big toe. Does the DNA of a toe’s cells somehow tell it how to be? That would mean the DNA of each toe must be expressed in a specific way, but oppositely for each foot. Curious. The same is true for all parts of our bilateral body. Like each leg properly facing forward from its hinge, not backward or to the side. This is a good thing.
No doubt scientists have discovered, since I took genetics in college sixty years ago, the reasons for such a marvelous situation but I am bemused by the fact that God made us, and other animals, this way. Yet each person’s toes are shaped slightly different from another person’s. We are subtly different from each other, and therefore unique, unlike for clones or identical twins.
Due to the vagaries of development and of life, there has never been another individual like me or like you, nor will there ever be again. Not even among the nine billion of us alive today. That means that we are each quite special. How does the Holy Spirit manage to guide each of us? How does Jesus, our great shepherd, deal with such a huge flock of individuals, with millions more souls on the way? If my own toes mystify me, I can’t begin to contemplate such bigger questions.
