LIVING ART: Embrace Who You Are

Over the past weeks, we have been talking about living arts (arts with life in them), we tried to point out some unique attributes possessed by various artworks. We started off by declaring that everyone of us is God’s masterpiece, we went further in the succeeding episode to highlight that the creator made primarily for His pleasure and last week, we added that we’ve got the signature of God on us which makes us complete, His property and most importantly, valuable. For some us who have given thought to it, you will realize that this series has been geared towards revealing or re-affirming to us all that, we are God’s art. Amazingly, that has not been the ultimate goal, the ultimate goal has been to reveal that you are special kind of art. The kind of art that is in itself an artist, a created creator.

Most often than not, an artwork expresses the author’s imaginative or technical skill, and are intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power. Rarely, will one find at artwork that is self-empowered. Take a drawing or painting for instance, once the painting or drawing has been made, nothing much can be done by that piece to improve itself. Improvement is often initiated by the creator. This is not so with living arts. Living arts have given the very essence of the master artist, the ability to contribute to the work He had started, the extension of heaven to earth.

This therefore leads us to the truth that everyone of us has been made an artist, by the master artist Himself. The problem however with most of us is or has been remaining an artist when faced with the challenges life throws at us. Can you remember all the dreams we had growing up as children, how limitless we were in our thinking, those times when we saw no obstacles, the time when everything seemed possible? Can you remember how creative we were with everything, we made sense of everything including the sand? We made castles of several rooms using sand, we made private jets from papers and so on? If asked what happened to those childhood dreams, what will your response be “life happened”?

We all are creative in a thousand different ways, often without realizing it because of the reality that we have been subjected to by the creators who lived before us. We have the potential to change the world around us and within us however, we often let it slide. For some us, this is a direct result of a sense of inadequacy, settling for survival rather than the inherent desire for contribution, procrastination, lack of acceptance from others, zero motivation, for others self-comparison, the list goes on. All of the personally placed limitations that utterly hampers our God given abilities as co-creators.

Creativity goes beyond our environment, limitations and opinions. Creativity is our very essence, it our building blocks. The desire and ability to make something new, to develop something that doesn’t exist from what already does, to express something that has not yet been spoken from what already has, or to solve problems that have known no solutions has been put inside each one of by God Himself. For God Himself is creative and we have been made in His image; we, like Him, are creative.

Creativity is God’s gift to us; it is who we are and the way to honor Him, is to embrace it. Using this gift to produce beauty and bless others.

Each one, as a good manager of God's different gifts, must use for the good of others the special gift he has received from God. 1 Peter 4:10 (GNT)

Declare: I am creative, so I use my talents to reflects God’s glory.