Right now, for a research project I am rereading one of my all time favorite books, Erwin McManus’ The Artisan Soul. The thesis behind his book is that each of us are a work of art and an artist at work. I love that thought and it is absolutely true. Don’t get caught up in that idea of what it means to be an artist. We are works of art because we are made by God, the greatest artist of all. We are artists at work because what we are creating is a life, that is our ultimate work of art.
On page 93, McManus brings up an extremely interesting concept. He writes, “We artisans are created to transform the invisible into the visible. The creative act is a manifestation of imagination. Everything that exists began as an idea; everything we define as reality began as nothing more than imagination. Reality exists because it was first imagined. In fact everything we know about the invisible comes to us in the form of the visible. Everything we know about God is translated through the things God created. God rested from his work of creating only when that creation was a complete manifestation of His imagination.”
It’s true. If it exists, it started out as an idea and the greatest things that were created started out in the imagination of God who calls into being that which was not. When we create, we are making the invisible visible. Ideas are of immense value, but only when someone has made the effort to express them in some concrete way. It does no good for us to complain when someone beats us to the punch. When we say we had the idea first, that may be the case, but someone else took the idea, ran with it and made the invisible visible. As a result, they won. What invisible thing in your life needs to be made visible? Figure it out and get to work.
AMOKArts 