Far Beyond Every Intention

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few nights ago, my husband, mother-in-law, and I sat around our little fire pit, the cold breeze swirling the smoke around us.  We zippered up our jackets, trying to keep out the frigid air.  But the fresh breeze was invigorating. We were released from the confines of the house. And the flying sparks tried to dance to the homeland of the stars, illuminating an unexpected frontier.

To urge on the flames, a crumpled piece of newspaper lay amidst the splintered pieces of wood, the sacrifice of a tree no longer living.  I could see the flames gently curling around the edges of the paper.  There were columns of type, a small picture perhaps of the author, and words being consumed.  Someone’s hard work, someone’s story, someone’s sentences were going up in flames.

But as I watched and pondered, the words were not being extinguished into nothingness, but moving into another dimension, another purpose like the wood.  It was no longer a page from a newspaper or a novel or article, so quickly discarded, but a source of light and beauty and a bit of warmth for a shivering soul.  And the flames seemed to whisper those words on the page right back to me.

Being burned in a fire pit was not what the writer intended for her hard work, but instead those efforts reached far beyond what could be known. 

We may think that our creative efforts are to no avail.  But we cannot know how those simple words, those crazy thoughts, a slow-growing garden, that painting or sketch, the forming of something new out of what has been discarded, a melody, warm hand-cut cookies, the tiny stitches of a shirt, or patching together a small poem bring light and beauty and warmth to someone we might not know, or someone we have no idea has a need for it. 

It bears eternity because someone has been changed by it, a legacy woven into our fabric, gaining in value, and passed on inadvertently into the creative life of another.

Because we were created in the image of God, we are all imaginative in some way in everything we do.  We see differently because of our Creator.  We see life differently because of His ongoing creativity being filled continually in us.  And through us.  Not so much as the folding of the laundry is without deepest value.

If we don’t write it down, paint that canvas, carve the formless wood, speak the words, write that letter, or sing out loud our hearts, it is not just that we miss out on His glory in it, His timeless purposes, His immense faithfulness.  But the world remains poorer because of our short vision and the deep dumpster of “doesn’t matter.” We have not responded to the nudges of God.  We have ignored His whispers of “what if...?”  What if I even tried?  And that is an enormous loss to the world. 

We never waste time bringing beauty, warmth, and the light of a million galaxies into whatever kindness we can, nothing insignificant in God’s universe. 

No, we waste time not doing so.