My Heart Song

Tuesday 11/5/19 5:36 AM

I am reading Psalm 19 each day this week. It begins with the familiar words about the heavens declaring the glory of God and the skies proclaiming his handiwork. Yesterday I was watching a couple of the physics videos from my sabbatical project and one of them talked about the working of the human heart. I still don’t understand everything about it but, from what I do understand, it is made of cells where the interior electrical charge is 80 millivolts less than the outer charge, creating an electric field. There are pacemaker cells at the top of the atria that receive a signal and ions move through the cell wall to make the interior 20 millivolts more than the exterior of the cell. As this charge moves through the cell it contracts and the charge continues to move through the remainder of the heart cells from the top to the bottom. When it reaches the bottom, the ions move back through the cell wall so the interior charge is again 80 millivolts less than the outer charge, causing the cells to relax again. The movement of this charge then goes upward through the heart returning it to its original state and then awaits the next signal from the pacemaker cells. That moving electrical charge is what is measured in an electrocardiogram. This process happens within approximately one second, causing a heartbeat of approximately sixty times per minute. If the pacemaker cells fail to send their signal for more than four seconds the person loses consciousness and if they remain unconscious for more than four minutes there can be permanent brain damage. The heart muscle cells are a pump that operates continuously throughout the lifespan of the person. The heavens aren’t the only thing declaring the glory of God. In my opinion, the interior workings of cells and the coordinated workings of groups of cells in the heart, the eye, the ear, the lungs, and so on, declare it even louder.