a fledgling writer writes on writing

It’s God’s opening act. We find it in the very first verse of the first book in our Bibles. As if He can’t wait to get to it. In the very beginning, God created. And, as human beings, we’re the only part of His creation made in His likeness. In the image of God created He him…as the King James so puts it.

This is important.

Because part of bearing His image is that we also create.  We create with words, and our own hands, and thoughts, and ideas. We create with solutions, and music, and technology, and medicine, and art, and food…We create because we are patterned after the Creator. All of us.

Now look closer and you’ll find a clear-defined difference between God and the world He has made in Genesis. He forms it, and makes it function. He tells His creation to and not to. He rules over it and controls it. He determines its boundaries, and He sits outside them.

It’s still the same today. Whether man chooses to accept it or not, in Him and by Him and for Him were all things made. We have our being—our identity, in Our Creator, and this world only makes sense when we accept His interpretation of it. When we find ourselves in Him.  It’s always that way with created things. To think the opposite is ridiculous. God finding His identity in us? Of course not. He made us.  

I promise you this has to do with writing. I promise.

You see, we easily forget, as mini-creators, what we make is not our identity.

Bingo.

So what’s it look like to find my identity in what I create?

 1.  It looks like me hating to have anyone touch my writing. The word edit is bad enough. The word editor? Nightmarish. Hives. Hyperventilation. Nervous twitch. Heartburn. Flutterings.

     2.  It looks like a deep groan, or lashing words when someone changes what I’ve created. Like mourning the loss of something I birthed. (not to be dramatic or anything)

     3.  It looks like inflated sense of worth when someone compliments my work, and a fast, deflated depression when someone criticizes it.

     4. It looks like avoiding collaborative writing opportunities like the plague. Not that I’ve ever caught myself thinking, I will NEVER write another VBS Bible curriculum or Christmas Program… But by it’s very nature, ministry is collaborative—an expression of the body of Christ and it’s various members. And that’s gonna rough if you find you in your work and watch it altered into an us. 

    5. It looks like avoiding growth and change in what I make even if it would be for the better.

    6. It looks like only inclining my ear towards those who flatter what I’ve made.

…………………………………..

We create. Because we’re made in the image of God, the great Creator. But we must also ‘sit outside the boundaries’ of what we make. It’s important because our true identity is found in our God. And in Christ, we are valued at much greater than the sparrows and lilies. A worth down to the very number of our strands of hair, and measured in the precious, shed blood of the Lamb of God.

So I write. Infant words. But they will grow and mature as I continue to create. And I do not have to fear this. I don’t have to shun those things and people who will come alongside me, and help me better on the way. Because my Creator is my identity. I am in Him and for Him. Nothing can mar the stamp of that image. And our work may well glorify Him as it reflects Him.

For from the very beginning, God created.

Beth