By Rev. Kevin Logan, Christ Church, Accrington.

IMAGINE the World Cup if gravity was different. Too weak and it'd be half- time before the kick-off ball came down. Mind you, Beck's foot, with less to bear, would heal sooner.

Too strong a gravity, and our Queen might have lost her head 50 years ago as the archbishop crowned her using a sky crane.

Further, you and me would be twinkles of stardust if the Big Bang had been out by as much as a box of fireworks. A bigger bang, there'd be no stars. Smaller, we'd have been a one-minute wonder.

And here's a clever bit to drop into the pub quiz lull. The gravitational constant in our universe must be 6.67 x 10-11 .

In the ensuing stunned silence, tell 'em that if just one of those numbers was the teensy-weeniest bit out, the whole shooting match -- Beck's foot, the Queen, World Cup, you and me, this column and the universe -- would never have made it.

Dozens of incredible forces glue our universe together. So finely tuned is it that, in comparison, Michael Schumacher's racing car is a Dinky toy.

Anyway, the chances of getting just one figure right -- the original phase-space volume -- is one part in ten billion multiplied by itself 123 times, more than all the particles in the whole universe.

If you've managed to get this far, well done.

Go and lie down and wonder at the incredibly Intelligent Designer who keeps all this together.