Bloody rant...

Blood. The stuff that we need running through our veins to stay alive. If it drains from a body, so does life. We were saved and washed by the blood of Christ alone. Set free by His blood being spilled. Studying it is definitely a privilege. I wish everyone were able to take an anatomy class just to learn about this mysterious tissue (yes, it IS a tissue. See? You learned something already.) that is far more complex than given credit for.

Two weeks ago, for A&P lab, we had to take our own blood and do tests on it. (No, I am not in the nursing program yet!) I was so shocked we had to actually puncture our skin with a tac looking like tool called a lancet and make ourselves bleed. Shocked more so that we did this in only a gen ed class. Holding the needle to my finger trying to get up the courage to stab myself was pretty weird... I had to do it THREE times until I was able to get enough blood out! That moment...not so fun...but over all, I really liked it. This is where my nerdom kicks in when I say I enjoyed putting my blood onto a slide and looking at it under a microscope (well...actually we only did Curtis' because we ran out of time), making a hematocrit (to which I found out that 43% of my blood is formed elements and the rest is plasma! Woo! See... more nerdom.) and I even got to type my own blood! A positive. I guess you can say I have an A+ in blood. ;)

Anyway, to the point of this "bloody rant", pun intended, blood is another awesome witness of God's love for us. Without it, we wouldn't even survive in the womb. It carries oxygen to our entire body, gives us heat, removes toxins from our body, and controls our pH. Something even cooler? Ever notice that when you get a cut and bleed for a while then it just stops? Why doesn't the blood just continually flow out until there's no more? That's what I would think happens. But no. God designed our bodies so that when we do get a cut and start to bleed, our blood clots through a process called coagulation. Without getting technical, there are proteins in our body that will sense when there is a wound and the proteins activate and work together to form this clot which then stops the bleeding! Now this may just be my nerdom kicking back in but honestly, how amazing is that? Only when we have an open wound does that happen. If it randomly happened in our body we would get "plugged up" and probably die...but nope, it only happens when there is a wound. Now tell me that's not God's love for us. Well it is. Just that tiny part of our physiology saves our lives! He DESIGNED it that way and this is just one aspect of blood! There's so much more!

What an amazing, beautiful God we serve.