For our 25th wedding anniversary, Sue and I enjoyed a river cruise in France.  Before traversing the Rhone River, they put us up in the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Cannes, on the French Riviera, on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.  So nice to be pampered!

Two weeks later we culminate our silver celebration in Paris, having seen and enjoyed so much of France.  One particular stop is at the medieval town of Bayeux.  It’s there that we encounter something we hadn’t heard of before that hasn’t left our minds since.

It’s the Bayeux Tapestry.  The what?  It’s a thousand-year-old woven piece; actually, an embroidered cloth, depicting the events and people surrounding the Battle of Hastings in 1066 AD.  Remember that date from your history studies?  Whether you do or not, it’s when France and Normandy conquer Britain installing the French Duke of Normandy as ruler of both England and France.  That monarch’s name?  William the Conqueror.  Whom I’ve discovered, through genealogical research, to be my 25th great-grandfather, along with 88+ million others as my wife loves to remind me!  Such a close-blood relative.

This tapestry is over 250 feet long. Takes quite a while to walk around it marveling at the detailed work of this masterpiece.  The hands that embroidered it were those of superb and brilliant craftsmen and women.  Their tapestry is breathtaking and astounding.  Only wished we could have gawked at it for much longer than allowed.

But such delicate work pales in comparison to the handiwork of our Creator God.  His work.  The fineness.  Its details.  The symmetry and precision.  And how God’s creation all holds together through His mastery and genius, which boggles my pea brain and little grey cells.  Makes anything of man’s design seem like child’s play.

Psalm 8:3–‘When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?’  It’s that phrase ‘the work of your fingers’ which gives me pause.  Every bit of creation has been minutely crafted by the Lord.  Down to the tiniest sub-particle and below.  Up to the highest mountain, to what’s above the earth in the skies.  To infinity and beyond!

This week spend some time marveling at God’s creation.  Any part of it.  A sliver here, a slice there.  Delicately and finely tuned. Then gawk, with a panoramic view, at nature’s expanse.   For all this is  ‘the work of your fingers’.

Thank you, Lord, for your marvelous creation.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.