bible and theology on Creativity

Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. We come from the Creator with creativity. I think that each one of us is born with creativity.

Children—and then adults—with a firm foundation of joy also have the capacity to make positive contributions in the world. It starts with play and exploration. When a child has a firm foundation of jo...

Children, in particular, are driven to create—if we just nudge them in that direction. They thrive in a world stocked with raw materials. But too often, and with the best of intentions, we fill their ...

Culture is what we make of the world. Culture is, first of all, the name for our relentless, restless human effort to take the world as it’s given to us and make something else.

Stewardship means to consciously take up our cultural power, investing it intentionally among the seemingly powerless, putting our power at their disposal to enable them to cultivate and create.

Tell all the truth, but tell it slant. . . . The truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind.

We know God not just in our conscious awareness and in prayer, but also in a deep inchoate way, by participating with Him in building this world – by growing things, building things, carving things, c...

Bullying has been around as long as children have lived in groups. Often, adults minimize or ignore it, reasoning: "we all have to go through it—I did, and I'm ok" or even "it build...

Liu Chi Kung, who placed second to Van Cliburn in the 1948 Tchaikovsky competition, was imprisoned a year later during the Cultural Revolution in China. During the entire seven years he was held, he w...

At one point in his life, the famous modern artist Pablo Picasso was robbed in his French home. He told the police he would be happy to paint them a picture of the robbers. “And on the strength of tha...

Pentecost is an invitation to dream. For when a community of faith quits dreaming dreams, it has little to offer either its members or the wider world. These dreams involve adopting a new perspective ...

The Master & His Workshop I remember first walking into my friend Andrew’s new workshop, housed in a colonial-style barn and situated on an expansive wooded acreage on the Eastern Seaboard. Thin...

Reject Christianity, if you will, out of motives of cynicism; turn away from it because you believe. Reality is malign and punitive; choose a God that is cantankerous, vindictive, or forgetful, or det...

God of Grace–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: You are good and You are almighty. You alone are worthy of our faith and trust and so we come to You with our hopes and hurts, our disappointments and dreams...

Lord: In our times of weakness and our hours of need, Yours is the strength that enables us to carry on, Yours the shoulder we rest our heads upon. When our load is heavy and too much to bear, Yours a...

God of the Impossible – Father, Son and Holy Spirit: There’s nothing too hard for you to do, Nothing too complex for You to understand, No place we go that You’re not there, No sin too heinous tha...

God–our Father, Lord and indwelling Spirit of grace and power: Thank you for hearing us when we pray whether in songs of rejoicing or through tears of sorrow. Thank you for gifts–for the gifts of musi...

God—our Father ... our Savior ... our Counselor and Friend: Thank you for daring to meet us at the most unlikely places, and in the most unexpected times of our lives. Thank you for redeeming our pain...

We confess, loving and gracious God, that we often find ourselves in a rut as we seek to live out our faith. We do not pray for your Spirit’s ingenuity or creativity. We close off our hearts from anyt...

When I was considering the possibility of embracing Christian faith as a young college student, what I feared most was that it would make my life smaller rather than larger—less love, less joy, less c...

First and foremost, work is not about economic exchange, financial remuneration, or a pathway to the American Dream, but about God-honoring human creativity and contribution. Our work, whatever it is,...

There is in us an instinct for newness, for renewal, for a liberation of creative power. We seek to awaken in ourselves a force which really changes our lives from within.

To make suggests making something out of something else the way a carpenter makes wooden boxes out of wood. To create suggests making something out of nothing the way an artist makes paintings or poem...

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!

We were created for goodness and perfection. That’s why we innovate, progress, and change. But if our progress loses its purpose, it cannibalizes our humanity, leaving us distracted and disoriented.

When I think of masterpieces, I think of art. But what is art? I like the way that Thomas Hoving, who was the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, put it: “Art happens when anyon...

It's easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It's a lot more difficult to perform one.

“You need a certain dose of inspiration, a ray from on high, that is not in ourselves, in order to do beautiful things.”

One way to learn the mind of the Creator is to study His creation. We must pay God the compliment of studying His work of art and this should apply to all realms of human thought. A refusal to use our...