Where does creativity come from?

Today, I stood in front of my class with 12 minutes left in the period and said, "I'm done. You're not interested in this lesson and I'm not going to force you to learn. Here's your homework. It's due tomorrow."

Just as I am feeling the most connected with the students, the most convicted about my call to love them, and the most convinced that the classroom is not a mistake in God's plan for me here.... chaos happens on a Tuesday. So, I'm desperately trying to figure out how to tie this in with one of my posts for this week. Since creative is exactly what I don't feel right now, I thought I would start there.

After my disappointing class and a few other programming glitches, I saw my friend Jose. Jose works on the maintenance crew and is basically an unstoppable bright spot in every day. We always have fun (mostly him teaching me Spanish). But, today as I passed a second time, he stopped me and asked, "Como esta, en serio?" How are you, really? I said a bit sad actually and he said he could tell by the look in my eyes when I said, "Muy bien, y Ud?"

Really, he could tell that I was disappointed with my day? This I'll have to examine! We went on to talk about how God deserves our praise whether rain or sun, good day or bad day. I left that conversation thinking about all the blessings out at the sea I was missing by passing time in my current mud puddle (CS Lewis, anyone?).

So, what does this have to do with creativity? Well, I don't fancy myself an artist, although I try. I paint and dance and sing a little here and there. I believe God gave each of us the desire and passion to create. And, because we are created in the image of God, I also believe that we have an intuitive knack for finding quality creations. I want so badly for things I create to be deemed, "good." Things like lesson plans, poems, dreams of saving the world, adventures, light fixtures, paintings... I want to look at them (and others' to look at them) and say, "Wow. That is good."

Today I realized that if I want to develop my creativity, then I have to focus less on what I consider "good" and more on something entirely different.

Tonight, I asked our Bible study girls this question (in light of our book study on Crazy Love by Francis Chan), "What is the absolute craziest thing you could do to show God you love Him?"

I wonder... if I'm obsessed with showing love to my Creator, would the kind of creativity would develop where I (and others) would look at it and say,

"Wow. God is good."

It's worth a try.