I am currently in the early stages of writing a book called Make Like Your Maker: Make What Your Maker Made You to Make. I decided to share this excerpt because it really speaks to the beginning of the creative process. For more on Make Like Your Maker go to my author page.
In the Beginning
I’ve always been an artist. I haven’t always been a believer, but when I was starting to explore faith, I decided I needed to read the Bible. Five words in, I read the first thing the Maker decided to tell us about Himself, when He said, “In the beginning God created…” Mind you I was just starting to know and to believe, so this was something I hadn’t really considered. It felt like a point of connection. God is a maker too.
An Amazing Story
I read through the creation account, Adam and Eve, the fall of humanity, Cain and Abel, Noah. It read like a novel—a continuous story. I saw the Tower of Babel (more on that later), the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We got to Joseph and I was hooked. What a great story, and I had to remember it was all true. Then came Moses, the slave turned prince, turned murderer, on the lam, who the Maker used to rescue his people. This thing was a page-turner… until it wasn’t.
I Got Stuck
I got stuck where a lot of people got stuck. The plans for the Tabernacle. If you get through that you get Leviticus and Numbers. Now today I can appreciate these Scriptures for the useful God-breathed passages they are, but as a new reader, I was floundering. I asked a trusted friend, who told me rather than trying to go cover to cover start with Jesus in the Gospel of John. You’re not going to believe what I saw.
The Creative Trinity
“In the beginning was the Word (another name for Jesus and so much more) and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” So the first thing I learned about Jesus was that He is God, but guess what came next? “Through Him, all things were created, without Him nothing was created that’s been created.” Could it be? Jesus is a Maker too? I also saw in Genesis that at the beginning of Creation, The Spirit was hovering over the waters. I was starting to feel in good company. Father, Son and Holy Spirit were Makers like me (well much better, but kind of like me).
Make Like Your Maker
If you’re a maker, you’re in good company too. In this book, we are going to look at how the Maker makes, what the Maker makes. His attitude toward making and His call to the people privileged to be made to be makers. Let’s dig in.
Ex Nihilo
God is a Maker, the maker of everything. We are makers too, but the making is somehow different. If I go to make a painting for example, I need to get an easel, paint, something to paint on and a slew of other materials. God creates Ex Nihilo. It’s a Latin phrase that means “out of nothing.” God speaks things into existence. When God speaks, things happen. He imagined the Universe, He spoke and it came to be.
Make Light of It
At the very dawn of creation, God made the dawn of creation. Genesis 1:3, “And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.” The Maker’s first creative act on earth, while the earth was still formless and empty, was to turn back the darkness. I don’t think it’s too much of an extension to say God has called us to create work toward that same end.
Manipulating Light
Consider this. Visual artists bend light. We take chemical compounds that reflect different parts of the light spectrum back to our eyes. Our craft primarily works by manipulating light. As I am writing this book, my laptop is (in a sense) turning pixels on and off, making black marks on a blank page. Each pixel blackened, manipulates light into a message. This leaves us with a choice. Will we create like our Creator, making things that turn back the dark?
Make like your Maker.
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