Maulana Wahiduddin Khan I The Sunday Guardian I 7th July 2013 I Page 13

Looking at the human body from a purely physical point of view, one finds that it is just made up of water, carbon, oxygen and some other chemical elements. One can even work out, as scientist Robert Pattison has done, the price of material constituents of the human body.

According to his calculations, their market value is about six and a half US dollars, about 70 Indian rupees. Yet, out of this Rs 70 worth of matter, God has created a human being so wonderful that no price can be set upon him.

One can appreciate the pricelessness of the human body, when some part of it is lost. If one loses a hand, for instance, millions of dollars will not buy a new one like it.

If one loses one's sight, all the wealth in the world will not win it back. If one's power of speech fails one, there will be no tongue in the shops of the world which will put one's thoughts into words.

How incredible is it that God should fashion something so wonderful out of things of no value. It is only He who can bring the dead to life; only He who has the power to convert insensate matter into conscious life, to make something out of nothing.

If a magician were to cast a spell on a stone, making it break into speech, everyone would be spellbound at his feat. The feat which God has performed is one of much greater complexity. He has made the inanimate matter that constitutes man's body into a moving, talking, thinking human being. Yet, God's feat does not cause people to wonder.

If only man were to truly discover God, he would become totally absorbed in the Lord's wondrous feats of creation. Everything in the world would appear to him as a remarkable sign of God's power and perfection.