Reflecting God’s Character in Creativity
“Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created.”
— Revelation 4:11 (NASB95)
About a decade ago, I participated in a theology study with a group of novelists. We used Wayne Grudem’s Bible Doctrine. The quote below is from Grudem’s more comprehensive study, Systematic Theology, on the subject Creation (Chapter 15, Section C. God Created the Universe to Show His Glory).
It seems that God created the universe, then, to take delight in his creation, for as creation shows forth various aspects of God’s character, to that extent he takes delight in it.
This explains why we take spontaneous delight in all sorts of creative activities ourselves. People with artistic or musical or literary skills enjoy creating things and seeing, hearing, or pondering their creative work. God has so made us to enjoy imitating, in a creaturely way, his creative activity. And one of the amazing aspects of humanity—in distinction from the rest of creation—is our ability to create new things. This also explains why we take delight in other kinds of “creative” activity: many people enjoy cooking, or decorating their home, or working with wood or other materials, or producing scientific inventions, or devising new solutions to problems in industrial production. Even children enjoy coloring pictures or building houses out of blocks. In all of these activities we reflect in small measure the creative activity of God, and we should delight in it and thank him for it.
Wow! As a writer, I certainly could relate to what Grudem stated above. I enjoy creating something new. What an amazing moment, when we begin to truly understand that God wants us to enjoy imitating His creativity.
When I sit down at my desk and imagine my characters and the setting in which they live and the problems and joys they experience, I am reflecting the creative activity of God. When I sit down with a skein of yarn and knit a prayer shawl, I am reflecting the creative activity of God.
Yes, all I am able to do is reflect God’s creativity. Mine is a flawed and imperfect version. But when God sees His creation showing forth aspects of His character, He delights in it. He delights in me. What an amazing truth!
What do you enjoy creating? Do you realize that God takes delight in your enjoyment of creative endeavors?
Go ahead. Get out those crayons and coloring books or that set of building blocks and create something new today!
~robin
PS Don’t forget to enter my Fire Up the Romance giveaway. The prize is a Kindle Fire plus the entire Kings Meadow Romance series (Love Without End now, future books as they release).
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I’ve always done things in the creative vein.
As a child, I loved colouring in books, paint by numbers, making things from plaster of Paris. So I could let my parents sleep in of a Sunday morning, I used to write and illustrate my own kids books.
In high school, my English teacher submitted one of my stories into a competition the school was holding. I knew absolutely nothing about it. I was horrifed that she’d chosen that piece as I didn’t think it was very good. The judges didn’t agree. I was surprised to be winning 3rd prize in the junior prose section.
Later on I continued my education via correspondence. I wondered why I’d received a copy of the correspondence school magazine. I looked all through it, and found one of my English stories published in it! I was so surprised! My English teacher asked me to send in more stories. I was pretty shy, but still the magazines came. If they couldn’t get anything else of mine to publish, they’d publish my English assignments. LOL! It’s one thing to be published by school magazines, but I’d be too scared to go to a real publishing house with anything I wrote.
Through the years I’ve knitted, made cards, done rubber stamping, painting and a whole lot of other things. My main craft over the years has been cross stitch. I taught myself in my teens. The very first cross stitch I ever did was a heart of red roses with 1 Corinthians 13 in the middle of it. Literally as I finished my last stitch, a visitor wanted to buy it, and she wanted me to make a second one with yellow roses. Being my very first cross stitch, I couldn’t be persuaded to part with it. It’s something that I really enjoy and I wonder if God ever looks back at his own creation and loves what He sees. Sunrises, sunsets, the Southern and Northern Lights, great landscapes, waterfalls. Of course He loves the people that He made.
I love making things for people. Especially if they don’t know that I’m doing it. I love to give unexpected gifts. That really is my point of joy. If I get such a kick out of being able to bring somebody joy. then I imagine that would bring God a lot of joy too.
Thanks for sharing, Trish!