by Catherine Hutton

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?

Psalm 8:3-4 NIV

Even as you read this, your fingers are likely scrolling through the text on your phone or computer. They’re deftly shifting the text up and down. This is so your mind can compute the images I’m attempting to shape for your imagination. I love the picture of God as artist. He gently yet inexorably ‘tickled’ the moon and stars into place, using the delicate touch of a consummate craftsman. The work of God’s fingertips is detail and drama. His business is creation and glory, God’s story of right and righteous relationship told a thousand different ways in Scripture and in the testimonies of those who are ambassadors of his Word, Jesus.

Since holding a pencil in the chunky fingers of childhood, many of us have wanted to write or draw. To tell stories and shape pictures. The work of hands is in building with bricks and wood, even using a drill to drive in screws. The detailed work of word-pictures is written with fingers. They are the mechanism which releases the flow before the tongue even knows how to speak them.

The Artist at work

The work of our fingers is in learning to guide the marks of the pencil. We must hold it lightly so that it moves with the adventures of the imagination. We must master the keyboard, so that fingertips are not bound by anything other than the limits of the creativity with which God has gifted us.  

I find that it is an amazing thing to watch new and fresh ideas develop and shape as I write. They come together more coherently when my fingers are moving, rather than having still hands while my mind is seeking to form an idea or discover a rhythm for verse or polish a facet of glory to share with a congregation as I prepare to open up the Scriptures for Sunday. 

I love to ‘consider the heavens’ – the vast array of stars and planets on a cloudless night. Now that I live on the edge of London, clear and starry nights are a rare gift – but when I go ‘home’ to Yorkshire or take a break in the English Lake District, the chilly nights are accompanied by myriad stars in their constellations, the galaxies and meteor showers shining on and on into unfathomable space. All created. The work, not blunt and clunky; ‘of God’s hand’ but delicate, intricate and poetic. They are the ‘work of fingers’, the sensitive shaping of God’s creative craftsmanship. He made us in His image. 

An awe in creation

The vastness and majesty of the night sky reduces the psalmist to an awed reflection of the human state. God made us in finer detail even than the stars in the sky with the innumerable details of their deliberate placing. Formed from the dust of the earth when everything else is spoken into being in Genesis 2, God has taken care in the detail of our life from the outset. This astonishes the psalmist. Overwhelmed. Awestruck.

It is those same hands, those same fingers, God’s very own which write a story of our life, shaping and making us and offering us to step into the fullness of life in Jesus.

The work of our fingers can shape worlds of imagined wonder and tell stories. The work of our fingers can assist others in engaging with concepts of faith, love and mystery. The work of our fingers concerns patterns and plots, it revels in character and beauty and in telling Good News in a way that engages and intrigues those for whom the hope of Jesus is as yet far off.

Have a look at your fingers as you write with love— they are your tool for creativity and as you look, see in them the image of your Creator and Saviour as you tap out your stories and paint your landscapes, create your patterns and shape your words for God’s Glory.

Meet Catherine