Junk or Design?

I’ve just spent the last few days clearing stuff at my father’s house. He was a man who collected stuff, kept things, endless things. For him, everything had a purpose. He was gifted with his hands and blessed with an inventive mind. The house and yard were bunged because he saw genuine purpose even in what others thought was junk.

It reminded me of a sermon I heard recently from a preacher who had been a biologist. In his sermon, he mentioned the lowly human appendix. He spoke of how we used to think it had no real purpose – some sort of evolutionary leftover. It was routinely removed, even when it wasn’t causing trouble. Turns out it has a niche and important purpose after all.

Professor Heather Smith, who has spent a lifetime studying the appendix says, “Now with modern technology, we can see things like the microanatomy and the biofilms in the appendix, and we have a better understanding of what it is and what it’s doing.”

You can, of course, live without one – just like you can live if you have lost a finger in an accident. But that doesn’t mean the finger has no value.

It turns out that the appendix has a couple of different, but related functions. It has a high concentration of immune tissue, which helps the immune system fight any bad things in the gut.

It also functions as a reservoir, or as Professor Smith calls it “the safe house” for the beneficial gut bacteria that we have.

At times our gut bacteria is impacted in a variety of ways. An episode of diarrhea can mean that much good gut bacteria is effectively flushed out of the system. Or a course or two of antibiotics can kill off good bacteria as well as bad.  In these instances, the appendix releases some of the good bacteria it has been storing into your digestive system and they grow and multiply to do their work once again.

So the appendix is helping us both to strengthen our immune system, and to repopulate the gut with beneficial bacteria after gastrointestinal issues.

Not junk after all!

There’s a whole list of things that were once considered vestigial organs (unnecessary leftovers) – one scientist many years ago listed 86 supposedly useless structures, including the thyroid, the parathyroid, tonsils, adenoids, appendix, and third molars. These have all been found since to be useful, and some essential. What we thought was junk wasn’t.

It’s a reminder to us that human life is much more complicated than we imagine. It has hallmarks of design all over it. Everything is purposeful. Nothing is junk.

For my dad, nothing was junk; purpose was everywhere. And if that was true of my father’s yard, and true of an appendix, how much more true of a person?

There are no junk or worthless people. Whoever you are, God has a purpose for you. Look to him and trust in him; you’ll find that purpose.

Or if circumstances have dumped ‘junk’ in your life – illness, disappointment, break-ups, breakdowns, whatever – let them push you towards God, rather than away from him. Then you will find that God will use them for good that you can’t now imagine. He always has a purpose.

Mark Loughridge is one of the ministers in Milford Reformed Presbyterian Church.  He can be contacted on 086 3907726 or jmarkloughridge@gmail.com. You can listen to their sermons on Spotify – look for Milford RPC