Get the appReimagining Your Creative Life: A Five-Day YouVersion Plan by Sho BarakaНамуна
A Call to Worship
The creative life seeks to produce or restore the blessings of a truth that benefits more than just ourselves. It seeks to reform our souls and society. It recognizes the evils around us while not allowing them to paralyze us.
To do this work well, we must always be doing inventory on our hearts and hands. Why are we making, and what are we making? The creative life honors the Spirit that inspires us while fixing our eyes on a redemptive future in which God has invited us to participate.
Creativity can be a lot like worship. So can work. We can manipulate our creativity just like we can misdirect our worship. To work is in itself a benefit of being created in the image of God. After all, he works too. But what we do flows from what we believe. Our work and art directly reflect the type of God we believe in.
When worship is the posture from which we work, every detail and person in the world becomes important. When our creativity is grounded in worship, we become deeply content. Our contributions are not about prestige or production. They are about faithfulness.
Our current circumstances may not be as we want (it’s okay to have ambition and want to expand our horizons), but it’s a call we can see as holy. The more honor we bestow on even humble positions, the more our dignity is affirmed. After all, it’s difficult to see our dignity when we don’t see our work in the world as dignified!
Even in the most undignified or exploitative settings, there were people who used their God-given creativity to reclaim their human dignity. We need to look no further than American slaves singing spirituals on the horrid plantations or chain gangs using crafty cadences to remind them of their humanity. The melody of the soul silences the mockery of our surroundings. Music, like all art, is the memory of virtue. No matter our setting, with imagination we can dignify it. Remake this broken world, even just a little.
Why would work grounded in worship lead to contentment?
Scripture
About this Plan
Your story shapes the world around you. Which is why, whatever your hands find to do, you can use your creativity to bring gold or shadow into reality. You were created to create. You were created to love justice. You were created to live mercy. Discover how the gospel brings these longings together as Sho’s words transform how you see God, your neighbor, and your creative life.
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