Elohim: Creator

              For the past month I have been learning about reproduction alongside of birth and development in anatomy and learning about these things has blown my mind in so many different ways. We are also going through the names of God this semester in our ISI bible study with international students. And we started off with the first lesson about Elohim, God the Creator. 

             I have been enthralled by names in the Bible, and how God reveals himself to us through His names. And in return, how much those names reflect Him in his character and attributes. The amazing thing is how that correlates to us, and our former names as sinners, lost, alone to our new names in Christ, children of God, forgiven, found, restored, redeemed. That is incredible. A complete mystery of grace. I also have loved seeing this concept again through old testament stories where so often the Lord changed the names of His people once he had saved or rescued them, and also as a means of telling what they would do in the near future and or even with the rest of their entire life. Sarai became Sarah. Abram became Abraham. Jacob became Israel. Hadassah became Esther. Saul became Paul.


Isaiah 62:2
        The nations shall see your righteousness, and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give.


Revelation 2:17
         ...to the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.’


     "And he will be called...

There was always a deep and present meaning behind the name that God gave, to himself, and to each of his people. They speak to the inner character and the outward actions of himself and of his people.

         I have seen Elohim through so many ways lately. Through is creation of our beautiful earth. The Blue Ridge Mountains, the incredible rainbows, sunrises and sunsets. Through the tender love of a mother to her children. Through the quiet cries of a baby for his mother. Through the depth of the knowledge of our tiny and limited human intellect. Through the intricacy of the human body and how it works...

      And I want to share one small way I have seen this through human anatomy, although it speaks volumes to the creativity and sovereignty of our God. During our unit on reproduction we of course went, in detail, through the process of fertilization. I will try to make this explanation as simple as possible. In one step of the fertilization process, the ova is actually surrounded with a layer of tissue and becomes known as the "Corona Radiata" latin for radiant crown. You see the corona radiata shown below as the light pink bubble, in a backwards C shape. Also at the microscopic level in the picture seen above we see the corona radiata resembled by this bright gold-green pigment and the head of the sperm is the red tissue working to break through it. When a sperm (the smaller light pink pigmented cell entering into the ova) travels into the fallopian tubes, it finds an ova, but must first penetrate the corona radiata before it can release enzymes to break through the zona pellucida and therefore meet the nucleus, where they fuse together, forming a zygote. If you haven't pieced it together yet, I hope I can help you see this. In order for a human being to become just that, the radiant crown must be broken into by the sperm and thus the human is born, broken...

       ...at the same time, for Jesus to have been created in the Spirit, through the immaculate conception, his radiant crown was never broken, the egg and sperm were united from the inside out! Maybe the anatomy doesn't really wow you, but that fact alone, without understanding everything, should blow your mind.

        Our creator God even knows us on a cellular, molecular level. Perhaps in the "new birth" of our spirit, he would restore our corona radiata. Perhaps apart from sin, it never would have been broken, like Jesus, and the need for things like immunizations and antibiotics wouldn't exist. But I am thankful, that though we sin, though we fall short, he knows us that deeply, and he reveals himself to us so powerfully. 

         Our God is the ultimate Creator, Elohim. 

Seek him, and you will find him.