Many creatures, as we told you last week, do not now live as God intended that they should when He first made them. It was His plan that the earth should bring forth food for all living creatures, and not that they should prey one upon another, as so many do now.

God’s Word of power, “Let the earth bring forth,” is still waiting to-day changing the dust of the ground into living forms. And then in the plants which He thus forms from the dust, He is working to prepare food for all His creatures, and so He fulfils that other Word which He spoke of that which the earth produces, “To you it shall be for meat.”

So His Word is still carrying on His work of creation, doing just what He did in the beginning when “the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground.” But instead of doing this immediately, as He did with Adam and Eve, He works by a slower process, through what we call the laws of Nature.

You eat when, and because, you are hungry, and drink when you are thirsty; but do you ever think of the wonderful work of God with which you are connecting yourself by these acts? Think how His power and wisdom have been waiting beforehand to prepare food to form your body and sustain your life! Read David’s words of wonder and praise as he thought upon this work of God’s hands:—

“I will give thanks unto Thee; for I am fearfully
and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Thy works;
And that my soul knoweth right well.
My frame was not hidden from Thee,
When I was made in secret,
And curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Thine eyes did see mine unperfect substance,
And in Thy book were all my members written,
Which day by day were fashioned,
When as yet there was none of them.”

Think how wonderfully is the wisdom and knowledge of the Lord, to whom all His works are known from the beginning. Before you came into this world so that you could be seen by others, your “frame was not hidden from Him,” but He was “making you in secret,” preparing “in the lower parts of the earth” the dust of the ground that was to form your body. At last, when His time came, the same beautiful psalm tells us, “Thou didst knit me together.” All the members of the body were perfectly fashioned and brought forth, so that others could see what He had seen from the beginning.

And then your body is constantly changing. As you grow God adds to your substance by His power working in you to change the food that you eat, (which we have found is the prepared dust of the ground), into the same substance as your body, just as He works in the plant to change the dust into the same substance as the plant.

This wonderful process we call assimilation,—from two Latin words, ad, to; and similis, like—meaning, to make like unto. It is the same life in all these things, but the life of God can take just whatever form He pleases.

And besides the substance that you need for growth, your whole body is constantly being changed,—giving off little particles of dead material, and taking up new substance in the place of it. Thus you are continually being re-formed, or made new, by the power of God taking the dust of the ground and rebuilding your body.

For this wonderful work God is making a constant preparation, still forming you in secret, preparing your substance in the lower parts of the earth, and knitting your body together by the constant renewal of His life in you through food, water, and air. You know what takes place when these things can no longer be assimilated,—death, desolution,—the body does not hold together any longer, but crumbles back into the dust out of which God formed it.

Will you not, as you eat and drink that which your Heavenly Father provides for you in this wonderful way, thank Him for His constant, loving thought of you, and ask Him to make you by His power still working in you, just what He wants you to be?

The Present Truth – October 12, 1899
E. J. Waggoner

Story in pdf Wonderfully Made