God Creating

With brush applying paint to a canvas, the artist is also engaging in creative activity. Depending on the style, the mind and work of the adult artist may not be clear to us either. The finished work has a greater degree of permanence.

The composer marks notes on specially printed paper. Perhaps he or she is sitting at a piano, checking that the composition sounds as desired. Printed and published, such a composition is, in a sense, "re-created" with every performance. The composer has, in fact, written a set of instructions which performers interpret onto their own instruments. Depending on their musical insight and skill, the result will be a good or poor representation of what the composer intended.

Genesis 1.26 tells us that humanity is made in the "image" and "likeness" of God. Part of the "image of God" in us is this deep-rooted drive to creativity.

We may be amazed by the nesting-holes prepared by the platypus or the delicate nests crafted by the sunbird. Our amazement is new, but the design is old. In the human spirit, however, there is something which strives for originality, for creativity.

Unlike us, God can create out of nothing - with wisdom and variety. To use our modern terms, he has created whole "ecosystems" with sustainable diversity. His creativity is "awesome" - and part of that we see in the platypus and the sunbird.

Psalm 104 celebrates God’s creativity. "Clothed with splendour and majesty" (v. 1), he "wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters. He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind..." (vv. 2,3).

"How many are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures" (v. 24).

The psalmist knows his need in the midst of all this magnificent creation is to praise the Lord, the Creator. "I will sing to the LORD all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. May my meditation be pleasing to him, as I rejoice in the Lord" (vv. 33,34).

Writing to the Christians in Rome, Paul says that "what may be known about God is plain to [men], because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

"For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles" (Rom. 1.19-23).

We live in the midst of a magnificent creation. We are meant to enjoy it, to revel in it - but not to worship it. That is sheer foolishness.

The world is our home, a home we share with many millions of others. The wish that "sinners vanish from the earth and the wicked be no more" (v. 35a) may seem very harsh to us. But it needs to be viewed positively as the desire that all who live here will be in harmony, not only with the creation, but with the Creator.

Prayer: Father God, you created this world to be our home. Help us to enjoy it, appreciating your love, your creativity, your majesty. In using the creativity with which you have endowed us, may we use all you have given in a caring responsible way. Our deepest need and desire is to worship you and to enable others to appreciate the beauty of your world and to see beyond it to your majestic beauty. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

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