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Viewpoint from Rev Dan Waite 19/04/2013
 The fingerprints of God
Rev Dan Waite, Associate Vicar
St Andrew’s Parish Church, Gorleston
I was brought up in the countryside and my first memory is of my older sister making a daisy chain on my grandmother’s lawn in early summer. As a young boy, I would sit and watch my father working in his garden growing food and flowers for the family, and my mother tending the hatched chicks in the incubator before they went outside to join their fellows in the chicken run to provide eggs for the family
When I grew older I copied their activities, working the soil, planting and tending the vegetables and looking after the hens. Nature and the blessings of watching seeds grow into plants, which produced a harvest, have continued to interest and enthral me through my life
When I became a Christian in my 40s, my eyes were opened to see God’s fingerprints in the world around me. Each plant with its distinctive leaves and flowers and habit of growth, each bird and animal with their own characteristics, each person having their own and different personality, and I realised that God loves to create, he loves variety and he loves to give us gifts to enjoy
We all have worries in this life, but walking in the countryside, in a park or green space, or in a garden can bring a sense of peace and restoration to us, where each plant is a fingerprint of our loving creator God
In the bible, Jesus talks about the worries of this world and God’s provision in creation, which is recorded in Matthew 6. “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labour or spin, yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his grandeur was clothed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today yet tomorrow is thrown on to the fire, will he not much more clothe you. O you of little faith”
Jesus is encouraging us to look properly at the ordinary things of life, look at something as simple as a wayside flower, or just consider the persistence of grass, and you will see his fingerprint of creation in it. Get to know our creator God, and he will open your eyes of faith to new dimensions which allow the common or garden things of life to speak to you, not just of the beauty and intricacy of his creation, but of his loving purposes in your life. God’s fingerprints are all around us, take a fresh look at creation
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