Genesis 1:1 / Genesis 1:26-28 / Ephesians 2:10
God’s Innovative Heart
In the twenty-sixth verse of the Bible, God creates humans in His
“image" or “likeness”. In the twenty-five verses that precede this, we get
a glimpse into the power of God’s imagination as He creates the richly textured
world around us. So, if God created us in His likeness, I think it follows that
each of us is endowed with an innate desire to create. Interestingly, I think
that even people who don’t believe in God sense this fundamental longing. While
some people may choose to express themselves through singing, dancing,
painting, or writing poetry, many more people desire to express their creative
reflection of God in their professional occupation.
Sadly, many of us have been taught by our schooling to leave our
creativity outside the office door. Creativity guru Roger von Oech illustrates
this with a powerful story. When Roger was in the tenth grade, his English
teacher drew a small dot on the chalkboard and asked the class what it was.
After a few seconds of nervous silence and many wondering whether it was a
trick question, one student finally answered, “A dot on the blackboard”.
Relieved, the class sat silently and waited for the teacher to go on. The
teacher explained that, one day earlier, she had done the same exercise with a
kindergarten class. She got fifty different answers, including everything from
an owl’s eye to a pole or a squashed bug. Roger explains:
In the ten year period between kindergarten and high school, not only
had we learned how to find the right answer, we had also lost the ability to
look for more than one right answer.
We had learned how to be specific, but we had lost much of our
imaginative power.
While it may be true that formal education dimmed some of our natural
imaginative power, I fully believe that it can be restored in each of us. For
Christians, this restoration is essential to being able to fully reflect God’s
image.
The first step is to stop limiting creativity to something exclusively
done by “professionals.” Creativity is inherent in everyone, not just the
worship team on Sunday or that artist neighbor down the street. I think we
reflect God’s creativity in our careers by having an “entrepreneurial mindset”,
or creating the world the way it ought to be by commercializing innovative
solutions to the problems we encounter in our everyday lives. You may know a
successful entrepreneur that created a profitable venture, but that’s the end
of a story that probably started with his or her vision for some fundamental
improvement needed in the world.
This definition of the entrepreneurial mindset goes far beyond
twenty-somethings building the next great mobile app in Silicon Valley. Any of
us can choose to act like an entrepreneur within our organization, be it a
Fortune 500 company, a mid-sized nonprofit, or a high-growth startup.
So, how do you start developing this entrepreneurial mindset and
vision? Pray for God to restore this imaginative spirit within you, then start
looking for opportunities in your professional context to introduce new
products and services to make things better.
Adapted
From: Redefining Work - You Version
