Be the ball....Be creative!

Today's pic is of the gopher from Caddyshack. Why? Because I like Caddyshack!

There was a little girl drawing a picture in class one day. The teacher asked the girl, “What are you drawing?” The girl confidently replied “A picture of God.” The teacher tried to gently correct her, “But no one knows what God looks like.” The girl replied, “They will in a minute.”

The confidence of kids is fantastic. Would you even attempt to draw a picture of God? Probably not. You might put your theology hat on, and draw a picture of Jesus and deftly explain: This is a picture of Jesus. Jesus is God. Therefore, this is a picture of God. QED.

True? Yes. But also a bit of a cop-out. To draw a picture of God seems an impossible undertaking. The Scriptures tell us that no one has ever seen God. And indeed, I think that is true (with the aforementioned exception of God incarnated in flesh as Jesus).

So what is it that underlies this audacious claim by the girl? Creativity. Children have a creativity that we can’t even begin to touch. Something happens to us by the time we come out the other side of our educational system…and I’m not sure it’s a good thing in some ways. We lose a lot of our creativity because we have believed what we have been told: you can’t do this, this other thing is impossible, it would be too hard to do that, etc.

But what if we were to cast off the shackles of those who came before us and instead rediscovered our imaginations? What if we saw our dreams as possibilities…even probabilities…rather than flights of fancy.

Take the rubrics and conventional wisdom of the past for what they are…suggestions. Step out in faith and, as Gandhi said, be the change you want to see in the world. Don’t let the naysayers be your guides. And don’t trust anyone over 30…er, um…wait a minute – I’m over 30. Scratch that! But listen to the other stuff I wrote!

Peace,

Kevin