Children are brilliant.
I have recollections of my childhood as being relatively trouble-free. Now ‘relatively’ is the key word here. At the time, fighting with my brother, falling over and scraping my knee was a problem to me. Riding a bicycle, falling over and scraping my knee was a problem to me. Playing games with friends, falling over and scraping my knee was a problem to me. You get the point, as did my poor knee on a number of occasions.
What I also recall about those days were the ideas. I had tons of ideas. Sparked by children’s cartoons and reading comicbooks like Asterix, there were so many things we could do. Trips to the moon, exploring under the sea. Miniaturization to go and fight the bad cells in the body. Build machines that took us places at the speed of light. Getting all sorts of ace powers to do really cool things like be invisible and be able to make things invisible at the touch so you could go to a sweet shop and help yourself to the strawberry sherberts, chocolate mice and cola bottle sweets free of charge.
Those were the days. And we could do it because the mind told us it could happen. We saw it, we dreamed it, some of us drew it, some of us wrote it, all of us talked about it in high pitched loud voices clamoring for attention.
In my teen years I remember having a creativity glut where ideas for stories, scripts, TV shows, movies, songs and the sort flowed from me like a rushing stream of water. These ideas would all come to fruition because I saw them, I dreamt them and talked about it in a bid to sound like a man.
Then I grew up.
It seemed as though creativity only had limited windows of opportunity. The pre-set format was to be obeyed. Even in this, rarely was creativity encouraged either through promoting songs written from within. If someone’s talents wasn’t singing, music or speaking, it wasn’t considered worth highlighting.
That was prevalent in the church setting in which I grew up. Things changed a bit as I grew in my 20’s, dance routines were introduced, which was groundbreaking. Yet it still appeared that the full range of creative expression manual, vocal or otherwise appeared to be taking second place to the holy order of church which could never be changed (even if it wasn’t backed by scripture).
The tragedy is in considering the diversity and bustling creativity of those in the Body of Christ. Whether in cooking, painting, gardening, pottery, photography, fashion design, architecture or elsewhere, we seemed to overlook these and worse still relegate it to ‘secular’ activities. Yet reading the creative action of Creator God, we see so many ways to return thanks for what He has made in our own creative expression.
I look forward to seeing church that celebrates creativity in all its guises as it seeks to glorify God even as buildings were designed to do so. I look forward to seeing church that doesn’t limit God to weekly 30 minute monologues and another ‘wonderful song by the choir’. I look forward to the exciting creativity of children impacting and enhancing our celebration and adoration of Creator God. I look forward to church truly celebrating the rich diversity within it and shine the light to the world of how God expresses Himself so widely and in so many ways.
As we celebrate creativity in all its Spirit-inspired, Christ-centred and God-honouring guises, so we anticipate the new heaven and new earth where purity, righteousness and the brilliance of His creative majesty will once again be on display unhindered and unadulterated.
All praise to our glorious, loving, holy, merciful, Creator God.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 