Your Creativity, A Gift To The Body Of Christنموونە

 We Create From The Wellspring Of Peace 

In a world that feels overrun by violence, a vision for our life with God that is built upon peace is essential. Violence is not hard to find; in fact, it often finds us — violence between individuals, communities, countries, and within ourselves. Violence is the destructive force that tears at the fabric of everything. However, by way of Jesus, we see an ordering to life that disrupts the cycle of violence and reconnects humans to God. 

When we participate in creative activities from a place of violence, it is our wounds deciding what is most true about the world and codifying that truth through artistic ritual. Violence begets violence, and artists are not spared from this cycle.  

Jesus leads us out of the way of violence and into the way of peace. Our peace with God is what affords an alternative vision for the human experience. Jesus makes way for humanity, and peace becomes the wellspring for our creative energy and enterprise. The progression of suffering that begets endurance, character, and hope gives depth to our creative process. The artist’s soul is one that suffers much. It is near impossible to be in tune with beauty and not take in suffering alongside it; our suffering must be placed in the refining progression of God’s work in our lives. A life in Christ means suffering is not wasted. It is refined into endurance, which is refined into character, which results in hope.  

To become people of hope, we must first become people who are honest about our suffering. We must resist the temptation to bury our pain and hide it from our life with God. Jesus wants to lay his wounded hands on our wounds, and from that place, create. 

To follow Jesus is to become comfortable with paradox. This is most profoundly expressed in the idea that there is a death that can lead to life. We are buried in the earth with Christ and find a new kind of living when we rise. 

For Creatives, there are many things for us to bury. Our pride, our ego, our vanity, our selfishness, our desire to be special or unique, our competitive nature, our artistic arrogance, these are things worth burying.  Some things are the things we are tired of carrying. Our embarrassment about our art, our shame, our guilt for spending time creating, our self-hate for not being better—these are things Jesus wants to hold with us under the soil.  

It is a mystery of God that our time in the grave with Christ is transformed into new living. When we rise, we walk in the newness of life. We are liberated from the things that buried us. In the resurrection, we are free to create with the energy of new life. The glory of the Father raises us and unites us with Christ. We are invited to create as entirely loved, generous, and empathetic people. Resurrection creativity is what we are heading towards.