MEDITATION ON TRYPSIN AND ANTITRYPSIN

Psa. 139:6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is too high, I cannot attain to it.

Dr. Donohue: “Alpha 1 antitrypsin deficiency causes emphysema, but it is a rare cause of it. Emphysema is a disruption of the air sacs through which oxygen passes into the blood, and carbon dioxide — a waste product of body metabolism — passes out of it to be exhaled. Cigarette smoking is the No. 1 cause of emphysema. The antitrypsin enzyme deficiency is responsible for, at most, 2 percent of all emphysema patients.
Trypsin is an enzyme that keeps air sacs clean. It's the lungs' janitorial service. Trypsin keeps scrubbing the air sacs even when there's no need to do so. The exuberant scrubbing damages the sacs. Antitrypsin rushes in to turn off trypsin's scouring to prevent air sac destruction.
Although the lung is the primary target of antitrypsin deficiency, the liver can also be affected. It's the organ that makes antitrypsin. In this illness, the antitrypsin doesn't leave the liver. Retention of the enzyme damages the liver and can eventually produce cirrhosis. However, severe liver damage occurs in only one-quarter of those with the defect.” (Riverside Press-Enterprise)

As I read these words in our local newspaper, I was humbled with awe at the glory of God. Air sacs, trypsin, antitrypsin—is it truly possible to imagine a Being Who thought up minute enzymes and organs like this? I don’t know. Not that I am in any way a skeptic. It’s just that I wonder if the human mind is truly capable of conceiving of an infinite, all-wise, all knowing, all-powerful, creator God. Yes, we can believe in Him but can we really comprehend Him? No, I don’t think so. The song declares He is “too wonderful for comprehension.” Elihu tells Job, “God thunders with His voice wondrously, doing great things which we cannot comprehend.” (37:5)

But let’s go back to God thinking up all this wonder-inducing creation. My finite mind tends to marvel, when I read of things like trypsin and antitrypsin, at a God who could know all that. As if He surpasses us in greatness because He is able to know, or comprehend, all the facts, realities, truths, data, etc. of all creation. My human brain tends toward reducing the knowledge of God to the perfect expression of the knowledge of man.

However, God’s knowledge is not like our knowledge. His knowledge is creative knowledge. Our knowledge is discovered knowledge. Oh, it may come to us in many ways, including our own search for it. But we also know things by revelation, intuition, inherently, as well as seeking for it through study and learning. Yet it is still discovered knowledge because the thing that we are knowing was already there for us to know it.

With God it is exactly the opposite. Again, Elihu indicates this to Job, “Do you know about the layers of the thick clouds, The wonders of one perfect in knowledge?” (37:16) God’s knowledge is not that He learned about the layers of the clouds. Rather, His knowledge created the layers of the clouds. As a former seminary professor and dear friend of mine often says, “if God knows it then nothing else can be!” The knowledge of God establishes something as reality. If He does not know it, then it does not exist.

Thus, we are left to wonder, in awe, amazement and adoration, of One who could “think up” trypsin and antitrypsin and air sacs and enzymes and livers, ad infinitum. Such knowledge truly is too wonderful for me.