I heard a podcast with a famous Christian songwriter a few weeks ago.  The interviewer (a musician in his own right) asked the songwriter about how he wrote songs.  The songwriter summed up his thoughts with this statement:

“To me, the process of songwriting is an echo of what it must have been like for God to create the world.”*

What he meant by that was that every song is unique; every note is unique.  It doesn’t come out of a formula or a set method.  Songwriting is organic.  It stems from creativity and an understanding of what is beautiful; what will thrum on the emotions and minds and hearts of people made in the image of God.

The same can be said for the way God created the world.  Each thing God made is unique.  Maybe one pine tree is similar to another variety of pine tree (just like chords or tune in one song vs. another song might be similar) but every pine tree and every type of pine tree is unique.  Nothing was made like robots to a set formula or monolithic design.  Everything that God made was creative and organic and made to touch hearts, minds, and emotions – His own as well as ours.

When I’m painting a picture, or even when I snap a picture on my camera, I do it and then I have to come back and look at it again.  The motion of creativity is so organic and you’re so close to it that you have to move away from it for a bit to realize what you have or have not done.  (In my case, photos I thought brilliant may not be later, while most paintings are better than I remembered them.)  I think of this when I read in Genesis that God looked down in what He had created the first three days, “And God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:10b).

Our creativity is only an echo of what God did with creation (I’m sure my mind isn’t close to big enough to think up all of the spectacular landscapes in the world!)  But by looking at God’s creation and by being creative ourselves, we get a unique glimpse into the process that God went through to make the world we live in.  That experience brings us a hairsbreadth closer to knowing our Maker and the One who loves us more than we could ever know.

*Mark Gersmehl of the band Whiteheart.  Check out his website at https://soulbreather.com/