Mark Berry highlights the privilege of our creative partnership with God - revealing the beauty of, and in, all things.
Thaddeus Williams wrote in an article for the Gospel Coalition:-
“The first time we meet God in the story of Scripture, we meet him as an Artist. “Created” is the first verb in the first sentence on the Bible’s first page. Out of the flurry of God’s imagination, the heavens and the earth burst into existence and teem with diversity and beauty.
"God could have easily spoken a monochrome cosmos into being. He could have made an all-gray universe—gray planets, gray animals, gray-on-gray rainbows in a gray sky. Even oranges would be called “grays.” This Graytopia could’ve been perfectly efficient and functional from an engineering perspective.
Why, then, make our multi-hued universe? Why the color spectrum? Why red strawberries, orange oranges, and yellow lemons? Why mandarin fish, peacocks, and chameleons? Because, as Genesis 1 repeats seven times, “God saw that it was good.”
Evidently, God cares about more than efficiency and functionality. He also cares about beauty. Taylor University philosophy professor James Spiegel has made the case that when God said “it was good,” he was not making a moral, legal, political, or prudential claim. He was making an aesthetic claim.”
You may or may not have come across the word Poiesis, it is the root of our word “poetic” and “poetry.” But it means so much more than simply “poetry.” Todd E. Johnson says, “Poiesis speaks of creativity, beauty, imagination, and alternative visions of what could and should be.” So, Poesis doesn’t just refer to the making of art, it means the revealing of something deeper and more spiritual, bringing into being something which is waiting for its time to be revealed, it is therefore deeply prophetic.
Heidegger likens it to carving a wooden cup from the trunk of a tree, he suggests that the cup exists already in the timber, waiting for the artists to choose to bring it forth. So, the making of art is part of the continuation of divine creativity, God and humanity in creative partnership, with the purpose of revealing the beauty of, and in all things.
What a privilege! What is it you are being invited to bring forth, to create?
Poem by Mark Berry, reproduced with permission
This could be the year of the poets and the prophets. Why not?
The politicians and profiteers have failed us, the powerful have had their way.
We’ve bowed down to the fear-mongers and fat-cats,
who’ve divided us and made it pay.
This could be the year of the poets and the prophets,
the artists and the authors,
the makers and the movers,
the strange and the sublime.
Through them old songs can be reborn and new storylines be told.
Through them there’ll be a place for poetry to fill and shift the soul.
They could paint the future rich in colours still not mixed,
and speak the whispered love language of heaven in our midst.
Could they teach us to abandon the desperate greed for power,
And seek a simple beauty in the patterns of a flower.
To stand and watch the sea breathe deep against the broken land,
And the whitening of the knuckles as we hold another’s hand.
Could this be a year of art, of story, verse and song,
Of the dreams in colourful compassion we’ve painted for so long.
A year of risk and possibility, of creativity and love.
Of tales and tunes that tell of hope and launch us high above.
To look upon this world we walk with eyes that see the new.
So let the poets weave their spells and the prophets speak of you.