essay<\/a> based on Psalm 46:10, \u201cBe still and know that I am God,\u201d in which I suggested that great wisdom comes from a deliberate parsing: \u201cBe.\u201d \u201cBe still.\u201d \u201cBe still and know.\u201d \u201cBe still, and know that I am.\u201d \u201cBe still, and know that I am God.\u201d<\/p>\nProfound wisdom in each portion, each inviting deep contemplation \u2013 maybe a lifetime\u2019s! Yet the essence that we of the 21st century take away is the admonition to be still. It is hard to hear God above the noise. It also is difficult to hear ourselves above the noise.<\/p>\n
And when that happens, we stop even trying to listen to ourselves. In the next step \u2013 a downward step on a spiral staircase, I\u2019m afraid \u2013 we finally stop talking to ourselves. Not talking to ourselves like mad people do, but conversations with the \u201cinner selves\u201d God has placed in our make-ups. Our creative selves. To stop that, I believe, is a sin. <\/p>\n
When God created mankind, He made them in the likeness of God.<\/em> (Genesis 5:1)<\/p>\nThe question of listening to ourselves, to responding to the \u201ccreative spark,\u201d is something that long interested me. My father, a polymath and omnivorous reader, encouraged me to draw and paint and write; to love music and art and history. But I came to realize that our earthly fathers and mothers only can cultivate such interests. It is our Heavenly Father who plants the seeds. <\/p>\n
For a while, as a baby Christian, I was persuaded by some people that we are rebellious if we claim to create anything \u2013 that Only God can create, and that nothing can be created that is not of Him already. Pretty soon I realized that this is only a word game; and, when that game is played, it would rob the Lord of one of His great joys. He is Creator-God, yes; but when creating us in His image, He puts creativity within us!<\/p>\n
If we are to be \u201cimitators of Christ\u201d in our standards and actions, so we can be imitators of God, and seek to create in His spirit; to dream and imagine, and dare. Attempting the likeness of God\u2019s very creativity, we can seek perfection, look for beauty, and bless others. <\/p>\n
We are God\u2019s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do<\/em> (Ephesians 2:10). <\/p>\nI humbly suggest that in God\u2019s eyes, \u201cgood works\u201d are more than sharing Christ and being charitable. It is good work indeed to be all that God intended you to be, to fulfill the creativity wherewith He graced you. To me, it comes close to insulting God to dismiss the talent and imagination you have \u2013 and Yes, you have gifts; we all do.<\/p>\n
If you doubt, this is when you should stop and be especially quiet, and listen for the Holy Spirit, and to the voice of your creative self. My daughter Emily is tenfold more talented than I, and she draws and paints and writes, beautifully. She has proposed collaborating on a children\u2019s book with her Pop \u2013 can anything honor a father more? She has dreamed, lately, of opening a restaurant. When life intrudes, as it will, creativity just sprouts elsewhere, like the pretty shoots and buds and reeds appear every spring, sometimes in the most surprising places. Emily now is designing a website about cooking and baking and serving others through kitchen-fun.<\/p>\n
Another Hero of Creativity, and a poster child for quietly listening, obeying, and sharing God\u2019s spark in her life, is Eva Cassidy. I only learned of her from friends in Ireland, where her acclaim commenced after her death. A singer born in the Washington DC area, she played in local clubs and made only a few recordings, partly because she loved so many genres she was hard to categorize; partly because she was intensely shy. But\u2026 she was warmed by that creative spark.<\/p>\n
Her performances were astonishing. Just past 30 years of age she died, suddenly, of melanoma cancer. After a few years her tapes made it to England, where, played on the BBC, her songs suddenly topped the charts. Eventually her music sold millions, in the UK, Ireland, throughout Europe, and back in the USA.<\/p>\n
I cannot listen to her without getting teary. Not just her voice and interpretations. But her example. She stopped and savored life, with the stereotypical obsession to be a superstar; but she sang to please others, where she was, with what she had. She listened; she loved God; she dared to step out. She sang because she loved to. She mastered her craft and surrendered to her heart \u2013 when, today, most of us try our hardest to do the opposite<\/em>, often failing at both.<\/p>\n\u201cHow lucky am I,\u201d she once said, \u201cto just do what I love: play the guitar and sing songs.\u201d How many of us can savor the satisfaction of doing what we really love… and really loving what we do? <\/p>\n
There’s the pursuit, and often the attainment, of happiness. That is one way to please God. It is not selfish: it is doing what He has prepared you to do. Go thou and create!<\/em><\/p>\n+ + +<\/p>\n
Eva Cassidy died in 1996. The Georgian\/Northern Irish\/British singer Katie Melua is about as old now as Eva when she died; they never met. However through the creative use of technology, they have performed duets, sensitive and powerful in their beauty. Eva\u2019s \u201chalf\u201d is from a serendipitous video-cam capture of a performance 20 years ago. Stop and watch and listen.<\/p>\n
Click: What a Wonderful World<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2-29-16 Just for a moment, stop. Savor the good; calculate the not-so-good. We must live our lives, even as the culture tells us to put on costumes and spout lines, letting our selves go past our eyes as if we were spectators, not the players. We, all of us, go around and around and around […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10,31,1761],"tags":[958,1149,919,1222,960,959,2091,1120],"class_list":["post-3466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-service","category-worship","tag-bob-thiele","tag-creativity","tag-emily-mccorkell","tag-eva-cassidy","tag-george-david-weiss","tag-george-douglas","tag-katie-melua","tag-marty-marshall"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s1bRYz-stop","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mondayministry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mondayministry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mondayministry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mondayministry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mondayministry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3466"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.mondayministry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3469,"href":"https:\/\/www.mondayministry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3466\/revisions\/3469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mondayministry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mondayministry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mondayministry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}