Create!
Something I am realizing is that I can travel the world, I can see the sights, but no matter what, I will always be myself. I will be the girl who loves to read, who longs to watch Harry Potter for the 800th time, and who needs to exercise her creative muscles.
Whenever I get busy, art is usually the first thing to lose its place in my life. It’s sad too, because it’s something I thoroughly enjoy and have always loved doing. And yet, as I walked into month 4 of my race it was the thing that I missed the most. I was feeling drained and tired. It is hard to be away from home for this long, and I needed a creative outlet.
So I used what I had and bought a paint by number for one of my sabbath day’s activities. My world was changed. I remembered how sweet it is to create things and to use my creativity to worship the Lord.
I think it’s easy to let our hobbies be something that you just do in your free time, or simply a way to pass the time.
But when I started painting and drawing during our daily worship sessions I began to uncover a whole new method of worship.
My God is the creator. He created this universe, with all the starry hosts and plants and animals. He crowned us as children and we were made in HIS image. God is by definition, a creator, and to be made in His image means that we too value creating things.
Therefore, when I began to create things as a way to bring Him Glory I then began to understand Him better, I got to see a new side of God the Creator.
How sweet it is to sit in the presence of the one who created you and in responds create things! He smiles at your attempts to portray His majestic sunrises and His beautiful trees. We use paint and chalk and pencils to make images of the beauty that He uniquely created! How sweet is that, how uniquely human is that. How beautiful a reflection of the One who created us. We get to create things in honor of Him.
I wanted to share this, mainly because I’m really excited about it and it’s been on my heart lately. But also, because I wanted to encourage you to try it out!
Try to create something, anything, it doesn’t have to be art, it could be anything. Jesus was a carpenter, so it could be building a bookshelf. You could write poetry or stories, we could make art or sculptures, you could dance or write a song. You could even simply take time to admire the creations of others.
I have just been really moved by how beautiful it is and I want others to share in this act of worship. It’s not about how good your art or creation is, it’s about connecting yourself with your Creator in a new way, seeing His joy in creation by doing it yourself and letting him speak to you through doing so.
Also I’ll include a few pictures of the artwork I have been doing because it makes me smile, and I hope it will make you smile as well.
So the story behind the book paintings!
I ran out of paper in Ukrain, and I could not for the life of me, find a store that sold art supplies, so having finished the Secret Garden, I decided I wasn’t going to drop it, I would rather try to make block poetry out of it. But since I am not poet, I decided maybe a twist on that idea. I decided to choose a word or phrase on each page and then that would be my topic for painting. (Above: topic is India! And Below: topic is the phrase “store of knowledge”)
Above: this is the paint by number that started it all!
