What an amazing brain I have

What’s the most wonderful, most extraordinary entity in the entire universe?

Answer: me.

Well—not just me, but my sense of being me. This peculiar thing we call self-consciousness. Our capacity to imagine, to connect, to reflect—and above all, to pray. That, to me, is astonishing.

Fascinatingly, according to physician Edward de Bono, the most significant activity of the human brain is our humour. We’re wired not just to think or survive, but to laugh.

And as I sit here writing this blog, wondering where it's going, I picture the neurons firing across my brain—though maybe not all 100 billion of them at once. Still, the human brain is hands down the most complex object in the known cosmos.

Just yesterday, I read an article in The Times that completely bowled me over. Scientists have created the most detailed map of a mammalian brain to date. Get this: 2.5 miles of neural wiring, 100,000 nerve cells, and 500 million synapses—all packed into a speck of a mouse brain no larger than a grain of sand.

Unbelievable. That’s nearly a full ParkRun squeezed into a single cubic millimetre of tissue.

Now, I have nothing against mice, but let’s be honest—they’re no match for the human intellect. No mouse has ever written a sonnet or solved a quadratic equation.

And yet, just like us, their brains change when they learn. Ours too. This process—called synaptic plasticity—means that every time we absorb new information, the physical structure of our brains is altered. Tiny electrical charges jump across the synapses between neurons, re-routing and re-shaping our mental landscape.

Which means, even as I write this, my brain is changing.

Digital researcher Jay Walker put it this way:

“All of imagination—everything that we think, we feel, we sense—comes through the human brain. And once we create new patterns in this brain, once we shape the brain in a new way, it never returns to its original shape.”

So when I finally type the last line of this blog, I’ll be a slightly different person than when I began with “Hi folks.” Isn’t that remarkable?

And here’s where it gets even weirder. My brain, in a sense, created itself. From the moment, back in 1948, when one of my father’s 100 million to 500 million sperm cells met my mother’s ovum, I was all there in potential—a microscopic zygote, 0.1 millimetres across. And from that, emerged… me.

Not that I’m taking credit for this astonishing feat. The glory belongs to God, the master craftsman of creation.

“For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

(Psalm 139:13f)

To say we are fearfully and wonderfully made is an understatement. And it doesn’t end with our creation—God knows our future, too.

“Your eyes saw my unformed body;

all the days ordained for me were written in your book

before one of them came to be.”

(Psalm 139:16)

It’s easy to lose our sense of wonder, especially in the ordinary. But as Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”

And we haven’t even reached the greatest wonder yet.

We are not just made by God, nor simply made in his image—we are made for relationship with him. As Augustine so beautifully prayed, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

That’s what our brains, our beings, are wired for—to know and love God.

And more than that—to be loved by him.

“The Lord your God is in your midst,

a mighty one who will save;

He will rejoice over you with gladness;

He will quiet you by his love;

He will exult over you with loud singing.”

(Zephaniah 3:17)

Now we come to the most astonishing truth in all creation—something even more breathtaking than brain wiring or star clusters or DNA”

The cross of Jesus.

“For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in [Jesus],

and through him to reconcile to himself all things,

whether things on earth or things in heaven,

by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

(Colossians 1:19–20)

Here we see the extent of God’s love. The cross isn’t just a symbol—it’s a declaration: “This is how far I’ll go to bring you back.”

We are loved beyond measure. That is the most stunning feature in all of creation.

Love so amazing, so divine,

demands my soul, my life, my all.