A Lesson On Folding Towels

Folding towels is a domestic ritual I enjoy, and I’m good at it. The reason I know I’m good at it is because I watched Martha Stewart give a demonstration on folding towels, and she does it my way. We fold the towel lengthwise into thirds, half it with raw edges on the inside, half it again and stack it into a pile. I may be even better at folding towels than Martha because she has a table dedicated to folding laundry, and I fold mine in midair. What can I say? It’s a talent.

I never fold towels without thinking about the world and its creations. While the dryer is going, the towels tumble in an atmosphere of freedom and spontaneity. Yet, in all the years I’ve been folding towels, I’ve never opened the dryer at the end of a cycle to discover even a single towel that had folded itself into any pattern of order without my intelligence to direct the process. Not once.

I suppose folding towels is a talent that doesn’t deserve much notice in comparison to the marvels of the world. Every day, the sun comes up, and the planets operate within their designated spheres. Plants and animals reproduce. Humans inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Then plants take the carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. Rivers run to oceans, and oceans evaporate into weather patterns. Life comes and life goes. Seasons change in a regular and predictable manner.

Daily, we participate in these unexplainable marvels and many more. How long would the atoms contained in all these processes have to tumble through endless eons of space and time before they could arrange themselves into such orderly, functional systems? I think it would take a lot longer than the time a batch of towels could fold themselves into a neat stack at the end of a dryer cycle.

There is a God. We can’t begin to appreciate or acknowledge His talents as we witness the magnificence of His creations all around us.

I’m reminded every time I fold a batch of towels.