What the World Calls Junk

For decades, geneticists referred to roughly 98 percent of human DNA as "junk" — vast stretches of genetic code that appeared to serve no purpose whatsoever. Scientists focused on the small fraction that coded for proteins and largely ignored the rest. It seemed like wasted space, a meaningless filler in the blueprint of life.

Then came the ENCODE Project. In 2012, an international team of over four hundred scientists published findings that stunned the scientific community. That so-called junk DNA was not junk at all. It contained millions of regulatory switches — sequences that control when genes turn on and off, how cells develop, and how the body responds to its environment. What had been dismissed for a generation turned out to be essential to the whole design.

Some of you have been living under a label the world slapped on you a long time ago. Worthless. Unnecessary. A waste of space. Maybe a parent said it. Maybe a teacher. Maybe you whispered it to yourself so many times you started to believe it.

But the God who knit you together in your mother's womb does not create junk. Every part of you — the parts others overlook, the qualities you have tried to hide — carries purpose in His design. El Elyon, the Most High, does not make mistakes in His craftsmanship.

You are not what they called you. You are what He created you to be.