There is a deep kind of pleasure – more than just pride – that comes from creating something yourself. So powerful is this pleasure, that it drives us to make things that we know will not last. Gorgeous displays of art – in a cookie. Sculptures – made of snow. And more than just the act of creation, creating something out of something of little or no value is even more appealing to us.
To create something out of nothing… or to turn something that was broken into something that has life and purpose… Perhaps this desire is a God-reflection. In other words, maybe when I sense that inner urge to try a new idea that I saw on Pinterest, or when my daughter decides to turn pieces of trash into a picture, it is a reflection of God’s redemptive and creative heart.
Taking something old and refinishing it or repurposing it – isn’t that what we long for God to do with us? When we hear a story of a life transformed, we rejoice in the miraculous creativity with which God re-created something broken. Our creative transformations of our homes, clothes, and food… could it be that our hearts so deeply long for the redemption of the broken, the creation of something new out of nothing, that we become excited even by the shallow parallels that are offered to us in tangible form?
Perhaps when we take a useless, ugly piece of furniture and see it transformed into something unrecognizably beautiful, there is a place in our hearts that finds hope for our own souls. Hope that a Creator larger than us might somehow see something worth rescuing in our own broken lives and add His own creative touch to turn us into something breathtaking.
Every renovation project, every craft, every re-purposing of something old – it reminds me that God takes great delight in transformation, too. And as much as I enjoy seeing the “before” and “after” pictures of a bedroom or a piece of furniture or a backyard, my greatest thrill is in seeing the “before” and “after” of a life transformed by the creative power of the greatest Renovator the world has ever known.
The Reclaimed Life 