Battling Creativity

The Battle: Creativity

The Enemy: Our perspective

The Battle Field:

A phrase I hear multiples times in a week that drives me bonkers is “I am just not creative!”

It is not true, not true.

We may not be creative in the same ways but YOU are creative!

Come back in time with me for a moment.

I can remember it like it was yesterday. I was six and in Mrs. Barr’s first grade class at Saint Michael’s Episcopal School in Dallas, Texas. We were given an assignment to come to school dressed up as what we wanted to be when we grew up. I was thrilled! I couldn’t wait to get out of my stiff school uniform and into something much more interesting. You see my dream job at six was to be a fire-fighting ballet teaching mom. That means I showed up at school in a leotard, tights, ballet slippers, fire fighters hat, and a purse. (I thought a purse is what made you a mom!)

WHAT????

What in the world is a fire-fighting ballet teaching mom? Who knows…but, at six that didn’t seem the slightest bit odd. At six anything seemed possible. 

Take a moment and just think about yourself at the age of six. The world was filled with such potential and you were the creator of that world.

But, like a red tee shirt after 40 washes the vibrancy of our life begins to fade. And we slowly but surely become about test scores, the matching clothes, fitting in with the cool kids and eventually focused on the “perfect job” that looks nothing like a fire-fighting ballet teaching mom. Somewhere between 6 and 26 the idea of creating, imaging, dreaming, adventuring all become at odds with societies expectations of adulthood. 

Yet, Jesus serves as our adult example of how to do life differently. Jesus style and approach to life on earth was to generate new ideas and associations over existing concepts. Simply put… One of His jobs was to be creative and spur others to creativity. Take a look at His resume; turned water into wine, used mud and spit for healing, walked on water, taught through the use of stories, fasted in the desert for forty days, made a storm stop, brought a man back to life, fed five thousand people with two fish and five loaves of bread, and rounding it out was being raised from the dead.

Jesus was at constant odds with societies expectations yet, he never let it change Him. Jesus’ everyday, eating, breathing, and sleeping life was lived with the utmost of creativity.

The Battle Plan:

You and I have been invited to be Christ’s hands and feet. We are to imitate what He did on the earth two thousand and seven years ago in our present day life – which means you and I are called to be people of creativity. You are no longer allowed to say “I don’t have one creative bone in my body!” because you do! 

“For since 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.” Romans 1:20

Did you catch that….we are without excuse! Creativity is not inherited, learned, taught. You are creative by the sheer fact that you know Christ.

Head back to the world of six year olds. What is it that you loved to do at the age of six that is missing from your present life? How can you wake-up the six year old in you that is napping? Whatever that something is re-discover it! Go buy yourself some paper and finger paints, bubbles, and paper dolls. Give yourself permission to return to the land of imagination and wild dreams.

Why? Why bother with that, you ask?

Because, Christ said so!

Because YOU ARE creative and inside that creativity lays the ability to shape and mold the world for Christ.

Adulthood may have come, but the adventure never ends. 


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