Five Minute Friday :: Make

• Five Minute Friday :: Make Linkup

We talk about making an event like a party or a wedding; sometimes we make up our face to enhance it; we make up with someone after one or both of us has been offended. But when Kate asked, What about you? Do you enjoy making things as much as I do? Perhaps this is enjoyment is because we’re made in the image of our Maker, the greatest and most creative Creator of all, it was the kind of creative making her picture of watercolor paints is all about.

Here's the website for art and design I've made: suntreeriver design. Sun, tree, and river are persistent scriptural images.

Humans and some other animals are tool makers who get stuff done. Susanne Langer wrote about humans as symbol makers who understand a degree of abstraction that indicates something other than an object itself. But beyond tools and symbols, in God, who stretched the spangled heavens, Catherine Cameron sings, "we, your children in your likeness, share inventive powers with you." She describes us as "children of creative purpose, serving others, honoring you." That poetry echo Kate's words!

Especially in the kitchen i do well with basic tools, though I'm only a toolmaker in an extreme emergency. As educator and theologian I'm about symbol a lot. At times I try to unpack a symbol; other times I assume people instinctively know what a given sign or symbol is about. By the way, sign and symbol are closely related and sometimes used interchangeably.

More than anything, my artistic making gives me the greatest joy because whether I'm teaching art, creating a design for display, announcing an event, branding a product or brightening a space, it's for Cameron's "creative purpose" of serving others by enhancing their lives and honoring the Creator God, Source of all creativity.

My header image is a watercolor I call Sky Horizon.

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