Our Creative God

By Meredith Geldmeier

I sat down to write about God’s creativity – the absolute originality of all that he does, his ability to bring truly new things into existence. I had an idea of how I wanted to begin, but I couldn’t make it right. I couldn’t make it work. As an English major I can never help striving for embellished language, not even as I’m writing this – as if my poetry could somehow climb high enough to convey a God who soars higher than understanding!

My thoughts die for lack of oxygen at such a height.

I sat down to write this and realized I had - nothing. No words seemed right. I despaired. I couldn’t do it. It would never be good enough. I threw a small tantrum and slapped my notebook shut in frustration. Why even try? What a travesty, to write about God’s creativity uncreatively!

Then God showed me that was the whole point: "How great is God - beyond our understanding!" (Job 36:26) Beyond the reach of language.

Only one Creator's words bring anything into being.

Any creativity I have is actually His. I am merely an image bearer (Gen. 1:27) - as such, I reflect God’s creative nature in exactly the ways He ordained, and I make imperfect imitations only.

Maybe you don’t consider yourself artistic; but you know the desire to bring something into being in other ways. All of us carry a small, broken piece of God’s creative impulse in us.

Most of us can probably relate to the inner groaning when our dust-hampered hands cannot express perfectly what we know, in our hearts, we were born to express. None of us can paint the picture we envision in our minds.

But the point is not that we fully express in ourselves who God is. No - only as a mosaic do we even begin to reflect the endless - limitless - capacity of God to cause beauty, order, goodness, life, joy - to exist.

Each person is an absolutely unique facet of an unfathomable, infinite God. There are no duplicates or triplicates with God – He is like a shoreless ocean that can never be sounded. Our striving is indicative of our soul-longing to be like Him. When we try and fail, it points us back to the one who had no creation.

Somewhere in the world is a man who built a kinetic sculpture of San Francisco out of 100,000 toothpicks over 35 years. (True story - his name is Scott Weaver.) But is he more or less creative than Michaelangelo, or the person who dreamed up the flavor combinations that turned into the best restaurant meal you’ve ever had; or the mechanic who finally figured out the problem with your car; the pastor who preached last Sunday’s sermon; or the child who rendered a rainbow with Crayons, a masterpiece of refrigerator art?

It is good for me to realize that I’m just building with toy blocks here. I make what I can with them. And I am constantly amazed at how other people take the raw materials they’ve received and turn them into reflections of God - even though they may be glorifying him without knowing him.

Ultimately though, the greater the disparity between the raw materials - toothpicks, for example - and the finished product, the more impressed I am. And that is why God’s creativity deserves all the praise; it staggers the mind to think that his raw materials were - nothing. And all he did was speak. It’s not like he took a bunch of dried leaves and turned them into Notre Dame. He took nothing and turned it into the universe.

It shouldn't surprise me, really, when I find the picture on my canvas is nothing like what it was supposed to be. I know firsthand the kind of materials I'm working from in my life - if it wasn't written on my heart, I also have it scrawled across pages and pages in stacks of journals.

Only God can make anything beautiful out of that.

But that’s the creativity of our God - he causes to exist. He brings into being that which is not. And He not only can, but He has said He will take my dirty rags (Isaiah 64:6), my nothingness, and turn them into a tiny glint of his glory, to his glory.

So, back to my initial question - why even try? Why draw the picture if it only goes as far as your mom's refrigerator? Because I’ve come to see that we are not more or less creative than each other. We are differently creative - and it's the picture we make as a whole we should value more than all else.

When you see the sun shining on the ocean, you never find yourself dazzled by one drop shining brighter than another. You can't even tell them apart. But you're still amazed by the view.

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. 2 Corinthians 3:18