I’ve heard it said that part of the imprint of God’s image on us is our need and ability to create.

God creates food, and we create recipes.

He creates people, and we nurture them.

He creates beauty and we capture it with brush and pen and lens.

Wool becomes a scarf, dyed in sunrise colors. Language becomes stories, poetry, lyrics.

The creating becomes a gift offered, a moment captured, a shared knowing. A taste, lingering.

Like a plucked flower in a child’s grubby palm, the act of offering is the beauty, more than the wilted blossom given.

God saw that it was good, those first days of galaxies and peacocks and sweet, piney woods. Declared it very good when meeting our eyes for the first time.

We return that gaze every time we capture wonder; as we strain and sweat to form beauty out of the fallen materials of life.

Our ability to define and appreciate beauty sets humans apart from all other creatures. We alone appreciate flowers and sunsets not for what they can produce, but simply for what they are. And the wonder of it all, is that we too are seen and cherished, not for what we can profit our creator, but simply for who we are.

Our creating comes from the overflow of a love that delights in our existence.

“I am like a little pencil in his hand,” Mother Teresa wrote, as she cared for the diseased and dying in her corner of the world. What beauty might that same hand want to draw with our lives? How might we color and adorn the stark lines of hard circumstances that press in on us?

The beauty we make extends beyond an artist’s skill. It is the tenderness in a touch; a smile that sees the lonely. It is the caring question. The thoughtful note. The celebration.

It is responding to his lavish love by sharing it.

This is our task, our purpose: to reflect back to our Father the love that brought us to life.

And to adorn our small corner of the world with praise.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

Ecclesiastes 3:11