The common mistaken notion: creativity is luxury for the elite.

After all, those who face grinding poverty worry about the next meal with no excess time or energy for art. On Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, those with limited resources are concerned with meeting physiological needs, the tip of the pyramid containing creativity lay desperately out of reach.

Not having the right hue of paint color for your art – that’s a first world problem, people. Blogging tech issues on the 27 inch screen iMac? Hipster first world problems. Sometimes the right to create seem reserved for the privileged.

And yet the new creation called forth in Christ is for all. The invitation to join in transformation is extended to the sick and the healthy; the righteous and the unrighteous, the prostitute and the rich man, the foreigner and the eunuch, the abled and the disabled, the genius and the slow learner.

To create is not mastery to which only a select few can attain. To create is to find beauty before there was. It’s when the affluent bring meaning into hollow luxury. It’s in the delicate flower placed atop the chipped windowsill of a poor family’s dwelling. Healing words spilled onto unread journals of the socially awkward, combinations of vegetables, meats, fruits faithfully prepared daily for the elderly, and variations of lullabies breathlessly cobbled together by sleep deprived mothers. To create, is to find beauty in the margins – mostly unsung, unread, uncelebrated. 

The gospel hinges on this one miraculous fact: there is life out of death. Our resurrection mission is to create wherever death reigns. To declare life wherever despair threatens. This is not a job for the elite. It can only be a shared calling for all. 

~ the new creation has come ~ 2 Cor. 5:17

Linking up with SheLoves Magazine, read more on #create over there.