Immense Creativity
I am amazed at the fact that God made us in His image. He created exotic plants and stunning animals. He designed the awe-inspiring sky and the unknowable sea, and yet saw that there was still something missing. So He created us, the pinnacle of creation. We are so precious to Him that He made us to bear His characteristics and reflect Him.
I often return to Genesis 1 to read about God’s immense creativity; I love that the first thing we learn about Him is His unending creative nature.
When God said “let’s make man in our own image,” I don’t think He was kidding or using hyperbole. I fully believe that when He made us, He infused us with His nature—including His immense and beautiful creativity.
But my guess is that most of the time we don’t see ourselves this way. If I were to go around and do some polling on this, I bet many people would say they aren’t creative. In fact, you might be one of those people. Somehow, we have come to believe that if you can’t paint, draw, sculpt, dance or sing then you’re not creative.
We have been using the wrong definition of creativity.
Steve Jobs, the eccentric founder of Apple, once said “Creativity is just connecting things…” He goes on to say that creative people have a vast wealth of experiences to make connection between. Their ideas aren’t always novel, but because of the life they have lived and all they have seen, they can find unusual or hidden connections between dissimilar concepts.
I love this definition of creativity because it excludes no one. We can all make connections, it just looks a little different from person to person. That means creativity isn’t limited to just the fine arts, but is something we utilize every single day. When we take two different ideas and find a connection between them, we are using our God-given gift of creativity.
I encourage you to take a moment to think about a typical day for you: what connections are you making?
Do you have to find commonalities with your spouse or your kids so your relationships can deepen? Do you find a way to make the work you’re doing more engaging for you and your team to increase productivity? Maybe you have to make connections between flavors to scrounge together something for dinner. Or maybe you’ve found unusual or exciting things to do so you and your family can stay entertained this summer while cooped up indoors. I believe all of these and so many more are wonderful expressions of creativity.
Making connections between concepts, ideas and people is what we were wired to do. We are people who crave connection and exude creativity — both of which are reflections of our perfect Father, the ultimate Creator. I pray we are able to see Him as we go about our days, daring to create connections in little and big ways.
