Making a Masterpiece of Me

Creation is all around right now. 

The gentle whirring of machines sewing. 
The weaving of tales.
The releasing of books.
The kneading of bread.
The splashing of paint on canvas.
The carving deep into soft wood.
The pushing of tender shoots through soil. 
The click, click, clicking of the shutter. 

And yet, my hands can't seem to get here to my small space to tap away my words.   The creative world spins, and I am not allowed on board as my life twirls to a unique rhythm. 

I wonder why I can't get at my creating.  And Sunday's sermon does a little gentle tapping in my thoughts:  "The Object of Worship-the Lord Our Creator and Re-Creator."

I seem to fancy myself a creator of sorts. A weaver of the intermingling of life and words and, I hope, some Truth.  But, as I gaze back across these two weeks, I come into focus a bit more, not as the creator but the created. 

My Re-Creator has been hard at work in making a new canvas of me, and he means to make a masterpiece.  He set out clearing away the old junk that resembles a velvet Elvis in a gallery of high art and replacing the faded colors with a fresh pallate and medium, a new heart on which His life, His desires are splashed across every inch of taut fabric.

The breaking of the old frame and stretching tight the clean fabric across expanded, healed joints isn't comfortable, but, oh, how I have longed for the change and have echoed the cries of Po in Kung Fu Panda, "How are you gonna make me NOT me?"

How would He choose to make a masterpiece of my low end, cheap imitation of His holiness?

Not through books or blogs or some comfortable armchair way.  Not even through some high and lofty exhibition of great sacrifice.  But through the discipline of service in the small things.  The uncomfortable things.  The simple things.  The smaller daily constant sacrifices, little deaths to self as the creator.  The things we most avoid because they kill the flesh that fights tooth and nail to survive another day. 

But I am learning that the promise of resurrection is hidden within the death.  That while I see all that isn't, He sees all that is, all He is making of me.  A masterpiece.

When Your Inner Poet Goes Missing

My inner poet has gone missing.   I know she is still close by.  On occasion, she pops in through the door unannounced and joins in the conversation at the most surprising moments.  Or I'll hear her clear her throat from another room in the inner recesses of my thoughts.     She wants to speak but withdraws, shrinks back behind her well designed utilitarian cover.  There is safety in usefulness.  In ink stained hands hidden under kitchen gloves.

Perhaps the bold reappearance of Spring has made her shy.  His masterpieces mesmerize and steal the show, as they should.  But, she forgets.  She, too, is His work.

So, today I will not force, cajole, or shame her out of hiding but will let her simply be until the warmth of the Son's rays melts her fear away and gently awakens her own Spring emergence, His handiwork.