Creativity - 3.18.06

My favorite thing to do is to create. I love writing, painting, making music, and anything else that I can be original with. I usually feel closest to God when I am creating. For me, creating and worshipping nearly always go together. I wonder at the two strong feelings of longing and fulfillment that I experience when I create. It fascinates me that I can experience both of these feelings simultaneously. What I find even more amazing is that, in reality, these two emotions in my heart are my longing for God and my fulfillment in him. Yet I will never have a complete sense of fulfillment until I am in heaven with my God. All our feelings of longing and fulfillment are produced when we experience beauty. Every beautiful thing we can see, hear, smell, taste, and feel is merely a reflection of God, the Source of beauty. When we experience beauty, we feel a longing for the source – a longing to be inside the source, because only in Christ The Source Of Beauty can we find total fulfillment.

God is wonderfully creative. He has filled his creation with magnificent variety. There are millions of different kinds of seashells and insects and fishes. No two snowflakes are alike, and no two sunsets are alike. No two people are alike. And there is more variety than that. God has woven playfulness and restfulness into his creation. God has made the universe and filled it with light, and given us eyes to see the light. More than that, he has enabled us to see colors. I am so thankful to live in a world of color rather than one of merely black and white! There is variety in the seasons and the weather patterns, in the nebulae and the galaxies. Just take a moment to look up at the sky and see the different types of clouds or all the different constellations. These things are no accident! God has created these things to be the way they are for specific purposes. I want to use my creativity for specific purposes too – first of all for the worship, enjoyment, and glory of my Creator. I also want to use it to encourage and build up others, especially other believers. I want to use it to learn more about God, life, other people, and myself. I want to use it to teach and exhort people. I want to use it to help me sort out my many confusions and to put into words and visual art my thoughts, struggles, and triumphs.

All creativity comes from God the Creator – we can create nothing apart from him. Because creativity is a part of God's image that he has given to us, it should be used for redemptive purposes. When I write, I love combining words having to do with the effects of the Fall with words of redemption to make beautiful poems, stories, song lyrics, and even school papers. I see beauty in God's redemptive plan, and I seek to reflect it in all my art. It is most important that God's children, of all people, be the ones using the creativity God has given them. We should make ourselves more aware of beauty. We should come to the point where we frequently stop in the middle of our busy lives to be still and look at the beauty of the universe around us.

True beauty is a mysterious thing. It flows exactly opposite the world's strong current. If it weren't for the grace given by God, the world would only be a place of the destruction of beautiful things. "Common" grace is a thing that God has given to all his creation – even to those who are not his children. It is the ability and desire to do good things, and the enjoyment of good things. Yet there is a higher grace – a grace given only to the children of God. One of the wonderful things about this grace is that it opens a person's spiritual eyes to spiritual beauty. I have seen the beauty of a Servant's heart – a thing that the world cannot understand. Even we the children of God cannot fully comprehend it. I am fallen, but I have been made a daughter of God, so that the Holy Spirit is transforming my view and giving me an increasing understanding of the beauty of the Servant's heart. He is daily maturing me into what I already am. Because I have been redeemed, God sees me as beautiful – all the time. I honestly don't understand this. I'm not even sure I believe it. God says it’s true – he says so in his infallible Word, but I still have a hard time believing it whenever I am feeling full of guilt (as I often am). I do have a desire, however, to understand and believe this.

Since creativity is a part of God's image, and humans are the only ones in creation that are made in his image, humans are the only ones in creation that can appreciate creativity. Creativity is deeply woven into our souls – another thing that only humankind possesses. Western culture tends to suppress creativity, despite its claims for the opposite. As a result, the older we get, the more we lose our creativity. It can only be regained with frequent and dedicated practice. I do not want to allow my creativity to be suppressed. I don't want that part of my soul to go ignored by me or anyone else. I can practice creativity in everything from my clothing to my paintings to my speech.