Contentment and the Creative Urge

 

By virtue of being made in the image of God, humans are naturally creative. We love to make things and try out new ideas and display our skill. You’ve noticed it, haven’t you? Beautiful patterned fabric when plain colors would be faster and work as well. Walls painted with vibrant murals instead of perfectly functional whitewash. Music and rhythm that makes us have to get up and move. What’s the practicality in that?

We may not all have the same idea of beauty, but we do seek to surround ourselves with what we love. I grew up in the hills of West Virginia, and though we didn’t have much money, we always had enough to visit the garden center for begonias and coleuses to plant in pots for the front steps. My mother spent hours and hours cultivating dahlias that she traded with friends and neighbors all up and down the dirt road. I have driven by sad little houses perched on the hillside and noted red geraniums and yellow marigolds rising out of coffee cans and old cooking pots.  These people are saying to anyone who cares to notice, This is my place, and these are the things I value.

I have written elsewhere about a time in my life when I failed to cultivate the beauty that I love, when I let clutter accumulate, took no interest in decorating, and neglected to hang pictures on the walls. Looking back, I realize that I was just getting through each day waiting for my circumstances to change. I was discontented, looking to a day when I could move someplace else and create the home I wanted.

I was in a meeting with a group of women when the speaker said something like this: “If you are not happy with your house or your income, or some other aspect of your life, you are saying to God, ‘You’re not taking good care of me. You’re a bad provider.’” That statement made an impact that I obviously remember to this day, and it made an immediate difference in my attitude. When I accepted that I was in the place God intended for me at that time, I started to take interest in my surroundings and worked on beautifying my home, making it mine for whatever time I might be there.

Peter reminds us that believers in Jesus are “strangers and pilgrims” on earth (I Peter 2:11), and Paul reminds the church in Philippi that “our citizenship is in heaven” (3:20). But in the meantime, we live here. As children of God, we can display our gratitude for God’s goodness by living lives of contentment—certainly not complacency with situations that need to change—but a settled and satisfied feeling that our God who loves us is taking good care of us.

Then, out of a heart of joy and appreciation, we can open up the creative urge within, put there by God, to build, paint, plant, write, rearrange our environment and reflect God’s image in our surroundings.

 --Sherry Poff