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Good morning.
The skin on our fingertips has several layers, and embedded in them are millions of receptors that respond to stimulation. Thermoreceptors enable our skin to sense heat, nociceptors [know-si-sceptres] allow us to feel pain, and four different types of mechanoreceptors respond to various pressures, vibrations and stretching of the finger.   It is the place where our mind meets the world.  You can use it to touch, point or play the violin.  It is a dual-purpose tool for exploring and also controlling our environment.  It is so well adapted that nine times out of ten we can touch something and understand it, even when we can’t see it.  A finger is pretty amazing.  And we have ten of them.
Increasingly, our interface with the world happens at the place where a finger touches the screen of a smart phone or tablet.  By comparison with the finger, a touch screen is rather limited.  It can only sense where the finger is – not how hard it is pressing, whether it is wet or dry, how warm it is, what it feels like, what shape it is…  Its language is limited to taps and swipes.
For all the advantages of mobile technology, I wonder if we’re in danger of creating a digital deficit – of limiting ourselves to the capacity of the machines we use; of regarding the most sophisticated tool we have – the human finger – as nothing more than an object to poke a glass screen?  After all, which of them – touch-screen or finger – is the more wonderful?  

Thank you, creator God, for the technology that enhances our lives.Thank you too, for the infinitely more amazing technology of the human body, fearfully and wonderfully made and bearing your image in every cell.  Amen.