Word Pictures

Makoto Fujimura, a well-known Christian abstract artist captured my thoughts so perfectly when he said the following in his commencement address for undergraduates at the Biola University in La Mirada, California:

“We serve a Creator God, and this Creator created us to also be creative. In the same way that God gave Adam the authority to name the animals in Genesis 2, God invites his children to co-create within God’s parameters. We cannot create ex nihilo, but we are all artists with a small “a,” and we are asked to work through our brokenness and fears. We are created for love; and love is creative.

So what would happen if every single person who follows this Creator asked the same question “What do I want to create?” And further, if we became an ambassador to the world to help ask, “What do you want to create, and how can I help you?” What if we answered this question filled with the Creative, Holy Spirit of God every moment that we are awake, and helped others to do the same? Would we have a world more beautiful, compassionate, caring and daring? Would we see our occupations differently? Would we see our universities differently? Would we see our motherhood, our fatherhood, our brotherhood and sisterhood differently?”

Worlds in the Making