“Creating God, your fingers trace the bold designs of farthest space.”

Hymn: “Creating God, Your Fingers Trace” - Jeffery W. Rowthorn (1934-   )
Tunes: KEDRON, HANCOCK, KILIBEGS

Remember using finger paints? Dipping your hand into a bowl of tempera paint and smearing it all over a sheet of newsprint? It was freeing, colorful and creative… at least it was in preschool. Somehow, I picture God’s finger-use in the creation process as much more deliberate and precise, making every little move exactly when and where it should have happened.

When my creation-mind gets out of hand, I imagine God dragging his finger through the Arizona desert to expose the Grand Canyon… or etching his way along the shoreline to delineate the land from the sea. When we lived in Denver, I was convinced God must have squeezed his fingers around a clump of earth and caused Mount Evans to rise above the western horizon, carefully shaping it to be “just so.”

According to this hymnline, God’s fingers not only finger-shaped the earth’s natural beauty but boldly designed the far reaches of outer space! Our God is an amazing creative force… a force to be reckoned with!

I have to be honest: one of the things I like best about fingers is their ability to rub my aching neck or to massage my deepest back muscles. In so many ways, those same fingers which dug in and raised up creation’s masterpiece can also be to us a great Comforter… a Relaxer, if you will. At the end of a long day or a long week – or a long lifetime! – God can still work out the kinks in our over-tensed spiritual/social musculature. And when he’s finished, as far as we’re concerned another miracle has come to be!

“Creating God, your fingers are fashioning still, reshaping rocks and riverbeds, drawing plants from the dirt, remodeling run-down lives. Continue to work your way through us to knead-out our pain and tickle our spirits in order that we might rejoice in you and with each other. May we surrender to the strength of your fingers. Let us once again say, ‘Ahhhh. That feels so good.’ Amen.”

[I had to restrain myself from saying “I Knead Thee Every Hour.”]

For copyright reasons, I can't print the full hymn text here, but you can see it at http://www.hymnary.org/text/creating_god_your_fingers_trace.