Book Review: God’s Creative Gift by Jody Thomae

For the last month and a half I have been using God’s Creative Gift-Unleashing the Artist in You: Bible Studies to Nurture the Creative Spirit Within as my devotional and it has been a real blessing. I got the opportunity to meet Jody Thomae in May when I did Pictures of Jesus at her church Five Stones Community Church, but we actually met online when I saw a Facebook post about this book and decided to look into it. It’s a really wonderful book.

Jody Thomae manages to walk the thin line of having a book that is both scholarly and accessible. This is a very intelligent look at God’s work in His artists today by looking at our very creative God and biblical accounts of creativity. The book’s chapters each begin with an in depth look at their topic and then five devotional studies digging deeper into the topic. One nice feature is that each of these “Digging Deeper” sessions ends with a song to listen to that brings the point of the session home. It’s a unique way to tie the arts into the study and for the most part they were easily accessible on Youtube.

Jody is a dancer and musician, but she took great pains to make this a book that will apply to all creatives, and believe me when I say, we are a diverse group. This book made a great devotional for me. It was thought provoking and quite honestly it inspired more than a few blog posts. It could also be used for a book study by a church creative arts group. You should really check God’s Creative Gift-Unleashing the Artist in You: Bible Studies to Nurture the Creative Spirit Within out! Five Stars.