I am an artist.

 

There is a piece inside of me that is most fulfilled when I am creating.

I love watching my girls create. They are so happy when they are creating something with their own hands.

All people are creative. Do you believe that? The older I get and the more people I meet, the more I believe it. All people are creative.

God is constantly creating, in us, through us, with us, and to co-create with God is our human calling. It is the calling for all of us, His creatures, but it is perhaps more conscious with the artist. ~ Madeleine L’Engle in Walking on Water

When did we begin to think of creating as something done only by children or artists?

I have studied and wondered before about the Holy Spirit, about how mysterious He seems, about how we tend either to leave Him out or to feel embarrassed and awkward when talking about Him.

It is difficult to teach my little ones about Someone whom I so thoroughly do not understand!

I want to understand. So I wonder and I study even more, and I discover something about God’s Spirit which causes that creative piece of me to leap with understanding and kinship.

The Holy Spirit is the part of the Triune God who creates!

How did I, as an artist, not know that?

I look at the creation of the world:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

I look at the creation of Jesus Himself within Mary’s womb:

And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy–the Son of God.

I watch my girls paint stories and think through this idea of the Holy Spirit being the Creator.

If God’s Spirit is creator and God’s Spirit lives in each of us, then are we meant to also live as creators in every facet of our lives?

I read this in Walking on Water:

What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter what our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts…Our freedom to be creators is far less limited than some people would think. ~ Madeleine L’Engle

I also read this from Emily Freeman at Chatting at the Sky:

I watched a woman with a pink apron on zip around the shop like she had a jet pack on her back. She wiped the counters, changed out the sprinkles, chatted with the customers. She was pleasant, lighthearted, intentional. “She works like she owns the place,” The Man said to me. I thought the same thing but with different words. She worked like an artist. She was motivated beyond what we could see, doing more than what was required. She seemed to fit there. Art isn’t so much the things we do but the way in which we do them.

My soul resonates with this idea. We are all creators. As the Holy Spirit creates life and beauty within us, we also create in the people and places we surround.

I see artistic potential in not only those pursuits the world would label artistic like painting and singing and dance, but also in small gestures done with great faith, like listening, waiting, and showing up…When believers embrace the unique shape of their soul and move into the world as the person we most fully are, art comes out. ~ Emily Freeman in Chatting with the Sky

I create by the way I live my life. I create art, I create worship in every facet of my life, from washing my children’s clothes to playing Bach on the piano.

Madeleine L’Engle embraces this idea when she writes about the creators who

express their caring…who shun shoddy workmanship, who are building their own furniture, making pottery, doing needlework in a striving for that excellence we have lost by some of our choices.

The Holy Spirit creates through me every moment of my day.

So live this life of creating. Love, serve, be wise, see the beautiful miracle that is life and let the Spirit create in you.

Art is when we do work that matters, in a creative way, in a way that touches them and changes them for the better. ~ Seth Godin in Graceful

 

Art credit: Dove of the Holy Spirit stained glass by Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Elizabeth is a wife and a stay-at-home mommy to three beautiful girls; she is a musician and a writer.  Visit with her at MadeSacred.com where she writes and tries to thoughtfully engage life and culture as a way of loving God and loving others. She believes that God has made everything to be sacred, things in our daily lives and things in the world around us.