No Junk in God's Design

In 1972, geneticist Susumu Ohno coined the term "junk DNA" to describe the roughly 98 percent of human DNA that doesn't appear to code for proteins. For decades, scientists assumed these vast stretches of our genome were evolutionary leftovers — purposeless, useless, taking up space.

Then came the ENCODE project. In 2012, an international team of over four hundred scientists published findings that stunned the scientific world: at least 80 percent of what had been dismissed as junk actually served critical regulatory functions. It controlled when genes switched on and off. It influenced how cells developed. What looked like waste turned out to be essential.

Some of you feel like junk DNA this morning. You look at your life and see stretches that seem purposeless — seasons of waiting, skills that don't seem to fit, experiences you can't explain. You wonder if the Almighty made parts of you by accident.

He didn't. God does not create junk. Every experience, every gifting, every quiet season in your life has a regulatory function in His design. Some of it codes for who you are right now. Some of it controls the timing of what He is still building.

You are not leftover. You are not filler. You are fearfully and wonderfully made — every single strand of you — and the One who knit you together wastes nothing.