Reflection: Co-creators
Chris is one of my heroes. In his garage-workshop he’s a master with wood. He whittles. His inspiration and skill might turn a rough little block of Huon pine into a smooth, perfectly weighted chess piece. I admire his expertise, patience, attention to detail and especially his appreciation of beauty.
It’s people like Chris that the Bible says were first filled with God’s Spirit. Not priests, prophets, and kings, but craftsmen. People attentive to colour, pattern, texture, symbol and smell. Co-creators with God in a desert workshop, building a place to meet with him. It takes wisdom, understanding, knowledge and all kinds of skills to woo people to worship.
A national enterprise of blue-collar workers dedicated to God’s oral blueprint (all 50-or-so chapters of it)—that was the tabernacle. People’s talents, God’s taste.* It was a prototype heady with garden imagery (scents, fruit trees, buds, blossom, rivers…). A paradise story told through symbols and space. A place that evoked a hunger for holiness and worship.
It’s our turn now, the enterprise of wooing people to Christ. The Spirit in us calls and equips us to carry on co-creating and imitating in workshops, warehouses, kitchens and studios. New Creation is afoot!
Prayer:
Kindle our hearts with your Spirit, Lord. May your deeds be shown to your servants, your splendor to their children. May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us; establish the work of our hands for us—yes, establish the work of our hands. Psalm 90:16-17
*Or as the English poet Ben Jonson put it, Art was an act of imitation before it was an act of invention.