Daily Devotional – April 10

Design

How many ways are there to fasten shoes? Old – fashioned shoes often had buttons; tennis shoes frequently use laces. Other shoes even use elastic or zippers. Some shoes, like children’s shoes and women’s sandals, often use Velcrotm. Where did mankind get the idea of creating Velcro?

One day in 1941, after going for a walk in the woods, Swiss electrical engineer George de Mestral noticed cockleburs stuck to both his pants and his dog. Instead of just cleaning them off, he decided to figure out what gave them their incredible sticking nature. He discovered they were designed with thousands of ingenious, flexible, barbed “fingers”, which allowed them to easily attach for a free ride on the fabric of clothing and hairs of an animal. So after eight years of research, Velcrotm, with its “hook and loop,” was invented. de Mestral used two strips of fabric, one with thousands of tiny hooks and another with thousands of tiny loops; de Mestral coined the term Velcro from the combination of the words “velvet” and “crochet.” The inventor observed the design that God had built into the cockleburs and came up with one of the most versatile and useful attachment systems ever developed! He was not the original designer; he just copied what THE Designer had already made!

O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

~ Romans 11:33a

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.