Who Am I? I Am Connected Series

Who Am I?

I am Connected

Eph 2:11-18

May 2, 2010

INTRODUCTION

Brain rewiring

A study of the "miraculous" recovery of a man who spent 19 years in a minimally conscious state has revealed the likely cause of his regained consciousness.

In 1984, 19-year-old Terry Wallis was thrown from his pick-up truck during an accident near his home in Massachusetts, US. He was found 24 hours later in a coma with massive brain injuries.

Within a few weeks he had stabilized in a minimally conscious state, which his doctors thought would last indefinitely. It did indeed persist for 19 years. Then, in 2003, he started to speak.

Over a three day period, Wallis regained the ability to move and communicate, and started getting to know his now 20 year old daughter - a difficult process considering he believed himself to be 19, and that Ronald Reagan was still president.

To try and find out what was going on inside Wallis’s brain, Nicholas Schiff and colleagues from the Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City, used a new brain imaging technique called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). The system tracks water molecules and so reveals the brain’s white matter tracts - akin to a wiring diagram. They combined this with more traditional PET scanning, to show which brain areas were active.

The team’s findings suggest that Wallis’s brain had, very gradually, developed new pathways and completely novel anatomical structures to re-establish functional connections, compensating for the brain pathways lost in the accident.

They found that new axons - the branches that connect neurons together - seemed to have grown, establishing novel working brain circuits.

Surprisingly, the circuits look nothing like normal brain anatomy. A lot of the damage had been to axons that passed from one side of the brain to the other, torn by the force of the accident. But Schiff says that new connections seem to have grown across around the back of the brain, forming structures that do not exist in normal brains.

This man was uniquely rewired and it changed how he related to the world

T.S. The Apostle Paul contuse his revelation of who were in Christ with a similar declaration

PS. WHO AM I--AM I A PERSON CONNECTED TO GOD IN A TOTALLY NEW WAY.

T.S. Our new wirng involves three connections.

I am Connected to a New World View.

11-13But don’t take any of this for granted. It was only yesterday that you outsiders to God’s ways had no idea of any of this, didn’t know the first thing about the way God works, hadn’t the faintest idea of Christ. You knew nothing of that rich history of God’s covenants and promises in Israel, hadn’t a clue about what God was doing in the world at large. Now because of Christ--dying that death, shedding that blood--you who were once out of it altogether are in on everything.

We are connected in a New World View.

World View -- refers to the framework of ideas and beliefs through which an individual interprets the world and interacts with it.

Everyone adopts a worldview.

Darrel Johnson, crediting the work of James Sire and N.T. Wright states that every worldview is asking and trying to answer the same questions:

1. What is prime reality? What is the "really real"?

2. Who or what are we? What does it mean to be a human being?

3. Is there such a thing as "morality," right and wrong? If so, what is its basis; how does one know the good and the bad?

4. What is the meaning of history? Or, is there any meaning?

5. What is wrong with us? Something is off--what is it?

6. Is there a solution; can things be fixed? By whom? How? How quickly?

7. Is there a God? If so, can this God be known? And is this God involved in the world, especially relative to human suffering?

8. What happens to a human being at death?

9. What time is it? Where are we in the flow of history?

It was only yesterday that you outsiders to God’s ways had no idea of any of this, didn’t know the first thing about the way God works, hadn’t the faintest idea of Christ. You knew nothing of that rich history of God’s covenants and promises in Israel, hadn’t a clue about what God was doing in the world at large. Now because of Christ--dying that death, shedding that blood--you who were once out of it altogether are in on everything.

So. . .

Discovering more of who I am is always connected to how God defines life, the world, purpose and meaning. Growing in Christ, implies that I am engaged in that new world view discovery.

Warning: Don’t take it for granted.