The Minutiae of Healing...

I was thinking this morning, and I guess a little over the last couple of days, about healing. There is so much that goes into healing that just isn't expressed by saying, "He made the blind to see, the lame to walk, and the dead to live again."
Skin, for example...Normal skin takes a few days to heal. (7-10 and sometimes longer if you want the exact numbers.) First, there is a cut. A blood clot forms in the cut because it is exposed to collagen fibers in the surrounding tissues. As various cellular hormones, etc. are expressed, that clot becomes granulation tissue. Granulation tissue is fairly nerve/pain free, but it is very vascular. Believe it or not, this makes it great at fighting off infection. It then becomes the lattice on which the basal layer of skin cells can creep across until the two edges meet. Once that occurs, it can slowly fill in the gap, going from that sensitive "baby" skin to the kind that was there before the wound occurred. A small scar is most always left behind, especially if the basal layer of skin was separated.
As for vision...There are SO many things and differences and pathways involving the eyes. First of all, depending on what side of your eye an object is visible, it may stay visible to the ipsilateral (same) side of the brain or cross over to the contralateral (opposite) side of the brain from where you "see" it. There are areas of the brain which store visual images which only took you nanoseconds to visualize, then an immediate assessment of depth, distance, and travel velocity are calculated so you can miss the fist coming at your face, or something like it. There are areas that detect movement in the stillest of environments (FYI: these areas are huge in prey animals, because they are always looking for their lurking enemy.) The retina has areas that detect the amount of light and the color of the light wave. (If matter is matter and doesn't change, and light is both a wave and particle, and you see something as blue that I see as aquamarine, then what color is it really? It's a question I've asked since high school physics...yes, I guess I truly am a geek.) The retina then transfers all that information via two major pathways, one that crosses, and one that doesn't, and your brain puts the whole image together. Did I mention that the lens flips the image upside down and then somehow between your retina and your brain it gets flipped back right-side up? Also, there are small muscles in charge of your lens attachments in the eye. They contract (involuntarily!) to focus both far and near. All of this occurs without your even thinking about it. How we translate what we are seeing into what is real takes awhile to develop. People say that babies best see primary colors and are near sighted as they are newborns, and they slowly develop the ability to de-fuzz who that is standing over them as they get older. Along with the seeing comes the perception associated with that image. It's all very intricate.
People who've injured limbs or had prolonged brain injury must undergo lengthy physical therapy in order to build up strength, tone, balance, and fine motor control all over again. (I actually just deleted a long section from this very spot about the spinal cord, injuries, and the daschund. You can thank me later.) Ultimately, what I mean to point out is that muscle atrophy, either by disuse or because of lack of nervous stimulation, is very hard to combat. There are muscle fibers which are best suited to sprinting (aka. endurance fibers.) There are some dedicated to strength (aka. bulky fibers.) There are whole muscle groups devoted to keeping your balance while standing up straight on level ground. These fibers, their nervous pathways, the perception of what is being sensed and is really happening, and the coordination of movement is something that we slowly develop as we learn to flip over, rock back and forth on our hands and knees, crawl, walk, run, and then skip or dance. It takes YEARS for us to develop these skills and strengths. For example, there are no 2 year old prodigy prima dona's in the Moscow Ballet.
Finally...I can't speak to human medicine in this area, but I was taught in school that if you really want to resuscitate an animal via CPCR (they've changed it to cardiopulmonary cerebral resuscitation, because it is no use to bring back the heart and lungs if the brain is dead), then you must open the chest and do manual cardiac massage within 60 seconds of arrest. We can pump them full of drugs, shock them with a few hundred volts, and we can get a pulse back. But if the brain is without oxygen for mere minutes, irreversible damage occurs. Nervous cells don't like to regenerate. They die and deteriorate very quickly. And as we all know, the brain is the control panel for every function in your body. There are even reflexes set in place that will try to protect your brain in the event of trauma, etc. (I'm talking about shifts in your blood pressure, even in the face of stress, that attempt to keep your brain from swelling more than has already occurred.)
I give you this long-winded science lesson to say that when God heals a leper and makes them whole, or when the paralytic stands up, picks up his pallet, and walks out, or when the blind man washes the mud from his eyes and sees, just what a miracle has truly occurred. God is sovereign even over the smallest cells in our bodies. He orchestrates and puts into being pathways and perceptions that our brain usually takes years to put into habit. It just amazes me that our Creator is in control of EVERY detail. Nothing is left out. When He heals, He heals COMPLETELY and FULLY. I know that right now, I'm speaking mostly of His ability to heal us physically, but the spiritually implications are just as real. He CAN make the blind man to see, the lame man to walk, and the dead to rise again. I am fearfully and wonderfully made, MARVELOUS are Thy works, and that my souls knows well. Praise God for his infinite wisdom, design, and control.