GROWING EDGES

How often do we think of God as a creative artist? Usually we are inclined to remember God’s sovereignty, his tenderness, power, and love. Yet the very first way God reveals himself in the Bible is as one who creates, who generates an entire world and everything and everyone in it (Gen. 1-2).

The Lord has also shared this creativity with us, as the Genesis account shows. Adam is asked to name God’s creatures. Eve becomes the mother of all the living. Later on in Scripture, we discover the memorable image of God as a potter who shapes us according to his own design (Isaiah 29:16; 45:9).

Another way we understand God’s creative power is through the way the Bible is written: a powerful succession of visual images, storytelling, and poetry. The God of Israel is a God of pictures and conversations.

How do we see this divinely-given creative spark?
Often we notice it first in our children. First of all comes the miracle of birth itself, a whole new person coming to be, someone who may have his mother’s eyes or her father’s ears but even so is entirely unique.

As babies become toddlers and small children, we see their delight in creation. We watch them develop their own creative life. Even the smallest children respond to bright colors and are delighted by music. Soon, they begin to make sounds, draw pictures, recognize numbers and letters, arrange things in pleasing patterns. Ordinary objects become playthings. A large box becomes a pretend house; an old pot becomes a drum. Any walk down a school corridor shows us the artistic triumphs of children, depicting the wonders of life: sun, sky, clouds, trees, houses, airplanes, trucks, cars, people.

Everyone is born with this divinely-given creativity, but the creative impulse asserts itself in different ways. Not everyone grows up to be a creative professional: actor, writer, musician, composer, photographer, sculptor, potter, painter, stained-glass maker. Many of us express creativity not through the artistic professions but through problem-solving, inventive business ideas, novel enterprises, organizational and planning skills, inspirational leadership, imaginative parenting and homemaking. While the special gifts of certain creative artists shine out, this “holy creativity” belongs to each of us.

What about faith and creativity?
Especially today, there is a great importance in the work of creative artists who hold a Christian world view. Such writers and artists are engaged in their own faith-journeys and faith-struggles. By representing such experiences in terms of picture and story, they quicken and encourage us. But genuine artists do not offer quick-fix answers and ready solutions. Instead, like Scripture itself, they depict the mystery of suffering, the burden of sin, the baffling character of the human condition. We may draw strength and insight from the subtlety and depth of their experience.

Where do writers draw their inspiration? In my own case I have usually written a book not only to say something, but also believing that something needs to be said. When I discovered Christian prayer as a real resource for my daily life, the idea suddenly popped into my head, “Why doesn’t somebody tell people about this?” Of course, it was an outrageous thought, because I knew how many people had already spoken and written about prayer. Yet perhaps I had not been fully attentive. Maybe I had even been skeptical. “Such things happen to other people,” I may have thought, “but not to me.” Then I realized that this impulse was really a call to write something that would express my own experience of prayer. At the time I was conceiving the book, I could not fully explain to others what I was doing. I would say, “I want to write a book like the mystics wrote, in which you feel the depth and mystery of prayer.” Or, “My book is going to be something like those sketch-book instruction manuals, the ones that tell you how to draw cats. Because I want to draw a picture of prayer.” I called the book Clinging: the Experience of Prayer, and “clinging” was only one of the poetic comparisons and images I used to describe prayer. My hope was to make prayer vivid and real for others as it had suddenly become to me.

I believe that all artists of faith entertain the hope of illuminating the life of grace. Writers and other creative artists stand within The Incarnational Tradition, showing us God’s presence in all the work we do. By the creative works we do and the created works we appreciate, we give glory to God. Our lives are the richer for it.

Blessings,

Emilie Griffin, RENOVARÉ Team Member