Art is a creation. But art is also a way of seeing the world and so is faith. Art shows us that things are beautiful and have meaning and so does faith. Art brings us deeper into the world we live in and so does faith.

when you open the bible, it begins in genesis 1. it begins with a poem that tells of god creating, of making and of god calling something good. this poem shows exactly who god is, first and foremost he is a god who creates. he’s a god who sees the hope raising up out of nothing and breathing the possibility into existence. he calls what he made ‘good’. we can establish that this word ‘good’ is not a state of frozen perfection. it’s a statement of progress. this creation is the foundation of the whole bible. after all, it is ‘in the beginning’.

for most people the bible starts in genesis 3 with a fallen existence, a broken world and a sin nature. i say this is where the bible starts for most folks because, this is the focus and prime obsession of what it means to be a christian. to be a christian is to be a sinner who was saved. it’s a faith full of division where things either are saved or secular.

but that’s only a half-truth.

the bible clearly begins in genesis 1, where god began as a creator. and in the next chapter he calls the first people he made in his likeness to be co-labors, they were called to tend and to work the garden because things were well growing. and then sin enters the world.

god has not stopped being a creator. he has not stopped asking us to labor and work. he has not stopped seeing the possibility and bringing it into existence.

if we being with our faith in chapter 1 of genesis, we as a people are empowered. if we are made in his likeness doesn’t that make us creators? doesn’t that call us to bring the possibility into existence? i would say yes. being a creator, being creative, bleeds into our spirit and being spiritual.

we’re called to be artists not sinners. we’re called to be a people who are in awareness that they burst with creative potential. god tell us that we should ‘work against the ground’, to fight to get to some- thing beautiful like the garden we were made in. that’s what the first few chapters of genesis tell us versus that we’re all hopeless without a savior. but we are saved and we trying to be back to the gar- den.

it’s a faith that makes everything sacred. this realignment of our foundation helps us see that everything is sacred. in colossians it says:

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

all things still means all things. it means that in this faith the secular is sacred. it mean that any creative expression is redeemed. for the christian there is no separation on the billboard charts; for the christian all music is christian music. child-raising, business, politics and labor are creative endeavors that are all sacred spiritual work. they aren’t outside of faith, they’re all avenues within this view of the world.

if what colossians says and what we learn in genesis is true everything is being redeemed and everything is meant to be encountered. to be someone of this faith is be someone who creates.