One of my brothers is an artist. Gifted with fine motor skills, not only is Dan’s handwriting immaculate, but he paints mountains and sunsets. As a ten-year-old, he signed some of his early oil paintings, “Danny Brooks.” My dad still proudly hangs them on the walls of his home. Dan is now a banking executive who loves the Lord and leads in his local church.
Our creativity merely mirrors God’s. Created in his image, we work with existing materials to make things. God worked ex nihilo or “out of nothing” when he made the universe. He created the heavens and the earth. As we read the Bible together this year, we will see that the heavens are the place of God’s abode, and the earth is the place of humankind’s dwelling. In the beginning heaven and earth were connected together. Man and woman walked with God in a garden.
In creation, the Spirit of God hovered over a formless, empty, dark earth. Our Creator took a disorganized, darkened world, and transformed it into order and light. The heavens declare the glory of God as I write these words. Blue skies and a bright sun shout the goodness of God. Who made this world? Do you ever wonder? People offer various explanations. Inspired by the same Spirit who presided over creation, our writer wants us to know, “God did this.”
Some years ago, following my dad up a mountain riding on four wheelers, I looked around at the beauty and thought, “This is my Father’s world.” My dad couldn’t hear me singing that song as I rode up the mountain, but my Father did. God still takes disordered, empty, and dark spaces and transforms them into beauty. In the last book of the Bible we hear Jesus say, “I am making everything new” (Revelation 21:5). God has made us in his image, and he is continuing to shape our lives to bring heaven and earth back together again. God signs his name on our DNA. We are his, by creation and through redemption.
