Fitbit Engineering

Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous-how well I know it. ~ Psalm 139:14 (NLT)

I have owned Fitbit devices for several years. I bought the first one around Christmas time about seven years ago. I wanted to make sure that I was being active, but also, more importantly, I wanted to be able to monitor my heartrate throughout the day. It worked well and did exactly as advertised. I think it was fairly accurate. However, after about a year, it fell apart. The case cracked, and the whole thing opened up so I could see the innards. It was no longer usable, but it was fascinating.

As I studied the circuit board inside the device, I was struck by how complex and complicated it was. Honestly, how hard could it be to track when someone takes a step? But, there were microcircuits, computer chips, and a multitude of connections from one to the next. I couldn’t figure out which piece tracked the steps and which piece tracked heartrate. I couldn’t even really figure out which part was the battery, never mind what could possibly be the Bluetooth transmitter! Granted, I’m not very mechanically inclined, but this thing was very intricate. It was obvious that a team of engineers put a lot of research and thought into making the thing work.

How much more complex is the human than the Fitbit? As the Psalmist puts it in our verse today, “Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous-how well I know it.” Each person, you and me and everyone, are so complex that no computer, not even a super computer, can mimic what humans do. It is very clear that an Engineer spent a lot of time crafting each one of us.

God is our Engineer. He is the one who built each of us in our mother’s womb. He is the one who breathed life into us. He is the one who called us into existence for a purpose – because everything that is built has one. He has made us wonderfully complex (especially you women!). Though we can’t fully comprehend the how or why He made us to be us, we know it is for good, and we know that it was on purpose. God created each person for a reason. And, we are wonderfully made.