The very firstthing the Bible tells us about God is not that He is powerful — though He is.
It's not that He is holy — though He is. The very first thing we learn about
God is that He *creates.*
And then, almost immediately, He creates beings made in His image.
Beings who paint. Who sing. Who write stories and build cities and cook meals
that bring people to tears. Beings who arrange flowers on an altar and carve
wood into something beautiful and photograph a sunset because they want to hold
onto something that moved them.
If we are made in the image of a God who creates, then creativity is not a
hobby reserved for artistic personalities. It is a fundamental expression of
what it means to be human.
Yet many of us have been talked out of our creativity somewhere along the way.
A teacher marked up our poem too harshly. A parent suggested we pursue
something more practical. We compared our work to someone else's and decided we
didn't have what it took. And so we put down the paintbrush, or the guitar, or
the journal — and we walked away from something that was, at its root, a form
of worship.
What if we picked it back up?
Worship is not limited to singing in a sanctuary on Sunday morning. Worship is
any act that reflects the character of God back to the world. When an artist
creates something true and beautiful, they are participating in the same
impulse that moved across the waters in Genesis 1. When a musician crafts a
melody that makes someone feel less alone, they are channeling something
sacred.
You don't have to be "good" at something for it to be worship. You
just have to show up and make.
An invitation this week:
Set aside 20 minutes to create something —
anything. Write a poem. Bake something from scratch. Draw a picture, even a
terrible one. Take photographs on a walk. Arrange the furniture in a way that
makes you happy. Don't judge the outcome. Just make.
And when you're done, sit quietly for a moment. You may find that you feel
closer to God than you expected.
Because that's what happens when image-bearers do what they were made to do.