Our Wonderful Bodies Testify of God, from President Nelson

    It was the study of medicine that convinced me that God was real. The more I learned about the human body, the more I realized that only  a Divine Being could have created something so magnificent...
    As scientists, we do not know how two cells unite to form an embryo or how primitive cells differentiate to become a beating heart or a thinking brain.  We just know that they do so according to a pattern established by our Heavenly Father.
    For example, consider the jewel that is the human heart–a compression pump so remarkable that its power and durability is almost beyond comprehension.  This tremendous organ pumps enough fluid every day to fill the equivalent of a 2,000-gallon railroad tank-car.  Your heat has four tiny valves that open and close 100,000 times a day, over 36 million times a year, without any effort on your part.
    These valves are soft and billowy as a parachute, yet as tough as sinew.  Unless altered by disease, heart valve are so rugged that they can stand this wear and tear for decades.  No man-made material developed this far can be flexed so frequently and for so long without breaking or wearing out.
    One of the biggest problems researchers working to develop the first artificial hearts encountered was to find a material that could be folded and unfolded many times a day, day after day, without ultimate fatigue and fracture.  The heart does enough mechanical work to life a 150-pound person from the street up to the top of the empire State Building every day.  Yet in so doing, it consumes minute amounts of energy.
    At the crest of the heart is an electrical transmitting center that send signals down specific special circuits that cause the muscle fibers to contract together with a synchronized response that would be the envy of any conductor of a symphony orchestra.
    The first artificial heart-lung machine we made occupied many square feet of space.  The pump that our Creator made occupies a space about the size of your fist and does not need to be plugged into an electrical outlet.  The power to our heart is provided, not by battery or cord, nor by compressed air or be nuclear energy, but by a process known only to God.
    Consider other properties of the body.  The human brain with its countless combinations of recording, memory, storage, and retrieval systems serves as the headquarters for one’s personality, character, and knowledge.  The brain’s capacity appears to be unlimited.  The more it si stimulated and challenged, the more it seems able to do.  The more we memorize music, equations, data, poetry, scriptures, and famous sayings, the more our capacity for memorizing and retaining information increases.
    What about our eyes?  I remember the day when I heard about a new camera that could autoregulate light and shutter speed settings.  At that time, that advancement in technology seemed remarkable.  Then I stood in front of a mirror, flashed a beam into my eye, and observed a brisk constriction of a perfectly round pupil.  My eye responded instantly to regulate the intensity of light that could pass through a self-focusing lens to reach the sensitive retina in the back of the eye.  We each own two “cameras,” if you will, and when they function properly, they are finer than any camera that you can buy.
    Then consider the body’s remarkable ability to reproduce.  Twenty-three chromosomes from both the father and the mother unite to make one cell.  These chromosomes contain thousands of genes.  A mavelous process of genetic coding is established by which all of the basic human characteristics of the unborn child are determined, and thus a new DNA complex is formed.  Approximately twenty-two days after these two germ cells unite, a little heart begins to beat.  At twenty-six days, the circulation of blood begins.  Cells multiply and divide, some being differentiated to become eyes that see or ears that hear, while still others are destined to become fingers, toes and legs.  The ability of the body to reproduce is magnificent and begins with conception.
    The body also has the ability to protect itself from disease.  I’ll never forget watching some children drinking water that ran down the sidewalk in front of our home.  The water carried mud from a neighbor’s garden.  I suppose the number of germs they ingested was incalculable, but not one child became ill.  The defense mechanisms of their bodies protected them.
    I could go on and on.  We could discuss the bodies capacity to autoregulate on an almost infinite number of variables, beginning with temperature.  We could explore the skin, which protects us against both extreme heat and cold, the ears, bones, adrenal glands, kidneys, lungs, and so on.
    Perhaps most remarkably, the body has the power to heal.  Broken bones heal.  Wounds heal.  Incisions and lacerations heal.  A leak in the respiratory system will heal itself, whereas circulation systems outside the body do not have this power...
    Our mortal bodies are literally gifts from God.  
(Russell M.Nelson, “Heart of the Matter,” 128-131, Deseret Book, 2023)