To Say {a #poem}

why we need all the ways God expresses Himself through our work

To Say

To say I will not draw because

Michelangelo lives next door 

and is forever showing me 

his drawings.

To say, I will not paint as
Monet is in his garden (again!) 

and mixing colors for his

next great work.

To say I will not design a stitch 

because Edith Head lives down

the street and is forever flaunting
her work in my face.

To say, I will not write because

Friend ABC’s said just the same thing,

their nuances and phrases putting

me to shame, and besides....look at

all those books with her name on the

spine.

To say all this defies the God-breathed 

seed inside, the only you who can 
write what you see. No other eyes,

no other voice pouring out on the

page or with a pen, but simply
a facet of Him whose voice
began it all. Creation reflected

in his co-creators, images

bodying forth His beauty.

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When I decided to name this Substack “Poetry & Made Things” it was a riff on the Greek word ‘poiema’, which literally means, “a thing that is made.”

The word is translated in Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians in that familiar verse, “We are God’s workmanship.” We are literally God’s made thing, His creation. Malcolm Guite has said that God “poems us into being,” that He is writing a poem with our lives. But we are makers as well when we write or paint or build or create anything.

I think one of the lies the Enemy posits in our direction is the subtle inkling that our creativity doesn’t matter if it isn’t front and center, over-the-top, on a stage, life-changing, huge or whatever hyperbole you choose.

But God speaks best, in my humble opinion, not in shouts from a stage but in a chorus of whispers, each of us adding to the remarkable creativity of a God who expresses himself in a myriad of ways. Sometimes quiet yet constant, at times stumbling, nevertheless offering our gifts to Him.

Pick up your pen or your paint or your glue. Lift that spade or spoon, tap at those keys. Keep at it my friends. We need your gifts. Just begin.

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