Look, I am making everything new! Revelation 21:5 (NIV)
The Newness He Creates – The Creative Series – Part 4
Go to PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7
In Revelation 21, John is describing a vision where he saw a “new heaven and a new earth… And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new!””
Re-newed. Re-created. Perhaps even resurrected.
The Divine is essentially creative. It’s his essence, his DNA… He IS divine creative energy.
The Genesis story was not a one-off. His creativity is perpetual, constant and relentless.
It's not a ‘new beginning' that forgets the old or disregards the past. It’s somehow inclusive. God takes all of our experiences, individual and collective, and draws them into himself (and into us) in a way that doesn’t cancel them out, but instead redeems them. He creates in such a way that brings newness into the middle of our very ‘lived in’ lives, right here and now.
We don’t have to “begin again” to begin again.
The writer of Ecclesiastes said:
“That which has been is what will be, that which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecc 1:9).
Nothing new?
Perhaps God’s creative nature is nothing new. He’s always been that way. It’s not new that he makes things new. It’s not a recent revelation of human consciousness that he longs to redeem and recreate. It's not new that God, the eternal artist, is always up to something new right in the middle of this beautiful old earth and our wondrous ageing lives.
Creating is not something that the Divine only recently took up. It's not his new hobby.
There’s nothing new under the sun.
On a podcast interview with Elizabeth Gilbert, Brené Brown Said:
“Creativity is how I share my soul with the world.”
Perhaps the newness of God is how he shares himself with us. And the newness he creates in us is how we share the Divine to our world.
The older I get, the more apparent it is to me that the Divine “new” is not a physical thing. The wrinkles are appearing, and so are the grays. We still get sick, horrible things happen, the pain of the past is persistent, and fear for the future can be overwhelming. Our lives are full of meaning, but at the same time, we experience moments where we ask, “what is the point of it all…”
Sometimes I look around my home, community, country and the world, and I think, “I can’t see any sign of a new heaven or a new earth. If God is making something new, he must be doing it somewhere else.”
But this is where his best work is done. Right underneath our noses.
As a creative, and someone who does it for a living, the creative process can be hard for others to understand. I work from home, with my kids, while I’m cooking dinner, getting the washing done, making lunches, in my yoga pants and a sweatshirt. To the unobservant eye, it can look like I'm not working at all. There’s a myth that artistic life is glamorous and crazy and full of inspiration and moments of genius while tucked away in an overly adorned studio that we take loads of photos of and post all over social media.
When really, to be creative, every morning I turn on my computer, I sit down with my coffee, and I type. I delete. I make notes. I listen. I read… I do the work. It’s hard work that takes time.
God is at work.
Even when we think he’s just sitting around spectating. Surfing the web. Looking for a bargain on Amazon. He’s actually at work in the blood and bones and spirit of our lives, sharing his soul, spilling creative energy all over our very lived in, wondrous, ageing lives.
Go to Part 5 – Properly Fixed and Fit Together »
Written by Lizzy Milani
[vcex_image_grid columns=”3″ pagination=”false” thumbnail_link=”custom_link” link_title_tag=”true” custom_links_target=”_blank” overlay_style=”title-category-visible” columns_gap=”5″ img_hover_style=”fade-out” image_ids=”20934,20935,20937″ custom_links=”https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1239768002?pt=118656308&ct=blog%20footer&mt=8,https://www.pktfuel.com/dailyemail,https://www.pktfuel.com/support” img_height=”350″]