One of the joys of parenting is watching your children express themselves in different creative ways. When I was little I never really considered myself creative. I loved to pretend, I loved to dress up, but I was never good at drawing or painting and I considered those the ultimate form of creativity.
Once I grew up and watched my children - especially my oldest daughter who is very crafty - I realized that creativity takes all forms. It is not just painting or drawing; it is anything that you can create. Creativity is seeing in cooking, in decorating, in writing, and even in gardening.
I think sometimes as adults we lose the creative part of ourselves. Maybe we've tried something and failed so many times that we feel like it's pointless to keep on trying. We don't have the same wonder and excitement that children have when they first try something new. Maybe we've been told that we are not good at something or we feel we can’t do it as well as other people and so why should we even put forth the effort? But I think we need to remember that the God we serve is creative. He created everything that is around us: the seasons, the universe, the varying landscapes and ecosystems, the animals. I think when we give up on being creative, we are not glorifying him in all the ways that we could.
Don’t see the connection? Think about this. We read in the opening chapter of the Bible, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Gen. 1:26-27) We are all created in the image of God and he set us apart from everything else he had created. This means we have a soul, the ability to choose right or wrong, emotions, and creativity.
We are also told in I Cor. 10:31, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.“ Whatever we do, even if we don’t think it amounts to much or matters, we are to do everything for God’s glory. I think one of the great examples of this is composer Johann Sebastian Bach. At the end of each piece of music he composed is written the phrase, “Soli Deo Gloria” - glory to God alone. Some, but not all, of Bach’s music is sacred but he saw everything he did as being a way to glorify his Creator.
I think it is also important that we encourage our children to be creative even if it is in different ways then we are comfortable in ourselves. So how, if we do not feel creative the same way as our children, do we foster and encourage their creative process? I’ll address ideas for this in a later post. But for now, consider yourself creative! God created you in his image with a unique ability to glorify him! How will you practice that today?
Photo by Tim Arterbury on Unsplash