Called to Create with Hope

What does it mean to call yourself a ‘creative?’ That you constantly come up with new ideas? That you begin a thought and then take a rabbit trail another direction? Or that your desk is always a mess?

My definition of creativity involves two possibilities:

• Making something out of nothing – as in the blank page that becomes a novel, creating a new recipe with unique ingredients, designing your new space within a home or office, etc
• Redesigning something already created – as in it becomes something else, like an essay that expands into a nonfiction book, or dumpster diving to find a broken chair that becomes a lamp table, or adding chocolate chunks to strawberry ice cream. A personal favorite.

For Jordan Raynor, author of Called to Create: a Biblical Invitation to Create, Innovate, and Risk, the answer involves being created in the image of God, the original Creator and first Entrepreneur. Check out Genesis One for an example of creating something out of nothing!

Raynor describes how good our work can be as we find meaning in the formation of sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. Or we design a new system at work. Or we teach our children a new way to think about life. Or we resolve a problem by creating a new way to solve it.

Raynor formulates a theory that all callings are equal, with writers, parents, teachers, engineers, and maintenance workers just as important as the pastors behind pulpits.

The highest calling is actually to become all God called us to be.

Called to Create is on my ‘highly recommended’ list, especially as it pertains to my particular tagline: “Keep writing. Your words matter.”

But it was the last chapters of Raynor’s book that captured my imagination and a few pages of intense journaling.

Raynor underscores his premise by contending that the words we create now and the work we produce will live on forever. That God is calling us to be co-creators with him as we approach the Kingdom Age where the new heaven and new earth will become reality. To learn what we can about creativity now so that we can engage in the new world with a renewed passion and fresh ideas.

Raynor’s challenge concludes with the question, “Can you see the First Entrepreneur taking your creations and working them into his eternal masterpiece?”

If you can answer, “Yes,” or even a qualified “Maybe,” then you can be spurred into a more intentional way of living, writing, working, and creating. Procrastination then becomes an obstacle conquered as you find more promise in how to “Keep Writing. Because your words do indeed matter.”

Embracing our creativity and nurturing it in our children, our students, and our friends is how the circle expands. How we acknowledge the beauty of creativity in each other and in ourselves. How we move toward becoming co-creators with the original Creator and acknowledge the hope God has placed within us.

©2023 RJ Thesman – All Rights Reserved

Check out my newest ‘creation’: Marketing for Writers. Available on Amazon.