In college, I often stayed up into the late hours with a strange nocturnal desire to create. In the twilight hours, ideas seemed to come to me for songs to write, languages to learn, things to create.
Usually, I would strum the guitar aimlessly until my creative momentum gave way to sleepiness.
In Stephen Altrogge’s short e-book, Create: Stop Making Excuses and Start Making Stuff, he addresses that little urge to create and encourages us not to give up on it, but rather to cultivate our creativity to the glory of God.
Create is a very quick read. Altrogge’s voice is conversational, and his excitement for being creative comes through while reading it. The basic premise that drives the book is that if God is supremely creative (which He is), and if we have been created in God’s image (which we have), then everyone should exhibit a measure of creativity. A further implication that he makes is that our creative acts (whether writing or drawing or cooking or whatever it may be) have the potential to bring God glory since they mirror the nature of God’s creativity.
Overall
Altrogge gives us permission. Permission to create, because though we may not be masters, we have been created to create. Permission to fail, since our identity and self-worth are founded, not on our creations, but on our redeemed relationship to our Creator, mediated through Jesus Christ. And so we have freedom and a responsibility to use what God has given us to make Him look great in the world. If you read Create, you’ll see why you must “stop making excuses and start making stuff.”