The Art of Folding

Ecclesiastes 3:11
“He hath made every thing beautiful in his time.”

As a child in the 60s, going for a meal at my Godmother’s house was a fascinating experience. In those days, many families would get out the best dinnerware for such occasions, and would probably provide napkins—or serviettes as we called them.. But my Godmother would fold the paper serviettes into swans, rabbits and all manner of beautiful objects. It seemed such a shame to have to unfold them, so it made this child far more careful than normal not to eat messily!

Origami, the art of paper folding, is a wonder to behold. Those engaged in the activity need to know exactly where to fold the paper. The pattern required is memorized, but it still exists. To teach the subject, one might produce templates, or nets, showing exactly where the folds, and, in some cases, the tears and cuts, need to be made. In later years, I watched a warehouse robot fold packaging in exactly the right way, time after time, to wrap some particularly fragile products.

An article on the BBC website[1] expresses justifiable awe at the way that nature folds things. The article reports that scientists are copying such natural designs, to produce better robotic algorithms, for packaging purposes.

We know that the programming to facilitate such folding is in the DNA of the organism. As we often mention in these broadcasts, the information in DNA can only have come from an intelligent source. But that is what we expect, because we know that God created everything, just as He said in Genesis.

[1]     Ball, Phillip (2003), Better Origami Using Nature and Maths, < http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130510-nature-maths-better-origami >, accessed 04/17/2017

Prayer:
When we look at how a bud unfolds into a flower, or into a leaf, once again we stand in awe of Your work, O God. Thank You that You made everything so well, and that You order our lives. Amen.

Notes:
Ball, Phillip (2003), Better Origami Using Nature and Maths, , accessed 04/17/2017
Image: Andreas Bauer. License: Creative Commons Share-Alike 2.5 Generic