In the beginning
God created. God spoke words and created what pleased Him. I feel closest to God when I am creating with
words.
But am I creating beauty?
Writing for me
has always been a cleansing process. The ink I pour onto the pages is black
with pain and yes, with sin. So how can it be that my smudged black words could be anything
but ugly, not offering words of beauty?
This mystery is
one of those God miracles, like stifling pressure makes diamonds or sculptures
change from wet clay to art in the heart of a fire. The very things that seem like
they must destroy, like pressure, fire, and pain are actually used to create
unique, special, beauty.
Changing pain to
beauty does not always happen, and never happens easily, but this
transformation is possible. God transforms my struggles to provide a new me and send me on new adventures. Like a frog
stretches out legs until he can venture onto dry land, or a caterpillar sheds
her creepy-crawly past to grow delicate wings for flight. So, too, God
transforms my dark moments, my mistakes and failures, my defiant rebellion,
into beauty. It is not something I can do. That kind of transformation is a miracle. A miracle of God.
Do my words matter?
In an age when definitions of words are changed by political agenda and words are not trusted to be true, what difference can be made by sharing my words?
Writing words to sort through my sinfulness and circumstances
provides clarity to me, and hopefully, when shared, encouragement to others as
they read of the transformation in me.
As I settled in
to write about this month’s theme of what creating beauty means to me and to my
writing, I am grateful for the time we recently had travelling and camping, seeing God's words of beauty in nature. Exodus 35 says God gifted two people with many talents and they taught others to use make beauty for God's glory. I am grateful to the Bezalels and Oholiabs in my life, most of whom are Inscribe writers, who
are teaching me the art of creating beauty with words.
I am not multi-talented like Bezalel or Oholiab. I am one of the
others. I may always be one of the nameless artisans who create beautiful words, yet my few words can make a difference in God’s Temple. And if not to people who read them, the words make a difference in my own life.
God who is
pleased by my act creating with words.
God is pleased
that I am willing to learn to create for His glory.
I may not create beauty, but God makes all
things beautiful.
