The Repairmen Within

Every day, the DNA inside each of your cells suffers tens of thousands of breaks, nicks, and chemical wounds — from sunlight, from breathing oxygen, from the ordinary stress of being alive. Left unrepaired, this damage would destroy the cell within hours.

In 1974, Swedish biochemist Tomas Lindahl made a discovery that would eventually earn him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry: our cells contain an intricate repair system that works constantly, silently, and without rest, patching the genetic code before the damage can take hold. Lindahl demonstrated that life doesn't persist because we are invulnerable — it persists because we are relentlessly repaired.

This is a portrait of what perseverance actually looks like in the life of faith.

The apostle Paul didn't promise his readers immunity from suffering. He wrote, "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed" (2 Corinthians 4:8–9). The damage is real. But so is the Repairer.

Perseverance is not simply gritting your teeth through the breaking. It is trusting that the One who knit you together in your mother's womb is still at work inside you — restoring, renewing, holding your fraying edges together when you cannot hold them yourself.

The repair rarely feels dramatic. But every morning you return to prayer, every Sunday you come back to worship, every time you choose forgiveness over bitterness — you are living proof that the Healer has not stopped working.