Does the name Christopher Sholes ring a bell? No? It didn’t for me either.
But as a I sat down to write today, what was my first thought? “Who on earth designed the order of the letters on the first typewriter?”
You guessed it – Christopher Sholes. In the 1860’s, he created the QWERTY (the first five letters in the top row of the typewriter/keyboard) formation. He didn’t get it patented, however, until 1878. There. You got your history lesson and trivia question for the day!
Remember the old, old typewriters with the arms that swung up and hit the ribbon that imprinted on the paper? People thought that Sholes designed the placement of the letters in the way he did because he wanted people to slow down so that the arms wouldn’t catch on each other and jam from the speed of their typing. But actually, he placed the letters the way he did so that people could type FASTER without having to stop to fix the jam. He studied and understood that there are certain letter groups that are more common, like TH, that needed to be specifically separated so that they wouldn’t run into each other when they hit the ink ribbon.
Sholes had a method to his madness. Those randomly placed letters on your keyboard? Not so randomly placed…:-)
Christopher Sholes story reminded me of how God works in our lives. Sometimes we look at what’s happening around us and view it as random madness, like the position of the letters on a keyboard. But everything that God does in our lives He does by design. There is purpose to it. He knows us and knows the world around us and works in a way that, if we listen and follow what He tells us, will keep us from getting “jammed”. If we trust His process, trust that He knows what He’s doing, then even if the “typing project” is long and grueling, we know that it is purposeful. And the end product will be a page imprinted with a masterpiece story to be shared with others.
Trust His method in your madness….
Ephesians 2:10 – For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
Ephesians 3:20 – Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.
Philippians 1:6 – And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.
Jeremiah 29:11 – “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”
