Sparking With Creativity

One of my favourite childhood shows was Mr Squiggle (showing my age) – where a puppet with a pencil for a nose would take a piece of paper with a few random lines on it, and use those lines to create an amazing drawing.

 

I was always intrigued at the creativity. Mr Squiggle had an amazing ability to making something beautiful and unexpected from something so simple and ordinary.

 

To create something means to bring something into existence.

 

And all of us, every one of us, have the ability to be creative.

Now I never used to see myself as creative at all!

If you’d seen my attempts at drawing, you would say I didn’t have an artistic bone in my body. I’m not much of a singer, or a songwriter. I can’t sculpt, can’t dance, can’t paint, can’t do anything with wood or metal or fabric or food.

 

But I’ve discovered that the sparks of creativity in me most often come out in the form of words. Poetry, speeches, magazine articles, prayers. I feel something well up inside and I need to blurt it out on a page.

 

The very first words found in the Bible are these, ‘in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

 

God Himself is an artist. The God of the Bible is a creative God.

 

And in Genesis 1: 27 it says God created humans in his own image. God is the great creator, and we are made in his image. Surely within each of us is the influence of the creator, the ability to create.

 

We live in a world where music can lift the soul, where stories can ignite the imagination, where painting and photography deepen our appreciation of colour and light and detail. The arts can make us laugh, they can make us cry, they can show us ourselves, they can inspire and delight, they can be therapy.

 

God still creates. Here on Earth God creates through the life He has created. God created, God is creating and God will create.

 

Creativity celebrates God. And you and I each have within us the sparks of creativity in all different forms.

 

So I invite you this week to do something creative: make something, write something, design something. Draw, paint, cook, record. Let your imagination lead you to the creation of something new and unique and expressive.

 

Mr Squiggle always came up with something unexpected and clever from a starting point of just a few squiggles.

 

God too can make something beautiful and amazing and unexpected from the simple and the ordinary. People’s lives can be made beautiful and amazing with a touch from the hand of God.

 

Perhaps that’s the most creative act of all.

 

www.salvationarmy.org.au/mornington