The Artisan Soul by Erwin Raphael McManus Page A

those are rooted in God. We were formed in the mind of God, designed by the hand of God, and created in the image of God. The fingerprints of God are all over us. But this is only how the process began.
    Like a master artist, God entrusts us with the critical phase in the process we call life. This leads to the most important question: What is your idea of you? Who is it that you have decided to become? If your greatest work of art is the life you live, and ultimately life is a creative act, what life will you choose to leave behind as your masterpiece?
    Who we were created to become already exists in the mind of God. It’s placed in our physical DNA and in the longings of our soul. Our lives are supposed to be a manifestation of the imagination of God, and whatever else we leave behind—the life we choose to live and the person we choose to become—is the ultimate expression of the artisan soul.
    What is inescapable is that we have been designed by God as a creative being. Each day that we walk this earth, whether we recognize it or not, we are in the process of creating. Our work, like God’s, is to create. One question remains: What are we creating? What are we leaving in the wake of our lives? The words we speak, the choices we make, the actions we take are the material from which we not only create our lives but create the world around us.
    Some have chosen to take this creative gift and turn it into a destructive force. That’s an inherent risk when you design a creature as a creative being. Have you ever met someone who was unbelievably creative in causing pain and wreaking havoc on the world around them? If we choose as our tools violence, greed, bitterness, and vengeance, our creative gifts will bring pain and devastation to the world around us. But if we understand our lives as the canvas God has entrusted us to create, if we realize that our lives are to reflect the nature and essence of God, then we will choose to expand those things that reflect the heart and character of God. When we choose to create as an act of love, we join forces with the Creator of the universe and become givers of life.
    Here we must move from being more than simply artists, to being designers as well. The artisan soul is driven by more than simple reflecting; it is driven by creating. Though far too often art is nothing more than a catharsis bringing relief to the deepest longings of our souls, the nature of our design demands of us far more responsibility than to create art for art’s sake. The truth of the matter is that all art has an underlying narrative for which it advocates; all art is a declaration of meaning or the lack of it; all art is created both for self-expression and for the extension of self. Art changes the world, which is why art cannot be left in the hands of an elite few. We must embrace the critical realities that everyone is an artist, that everyone creates, and that everyone is responsible for the creative act. So if we are created by God and created by God to create, then the divine process must inform our process.
    Long before design thinking became popular in the modern landscape of organizational and behavioral science, it was the blueprint of the opening chapter of the Scriptures. If a critical attribute of design thinking is to begin with the end in mind, from that end moving through synthesis to create the most human and organic process, then we find the pinnacle of that expression in Genesis 1. The Hebraic language reminds us that repetition exists for emphasis. You know what matters because they make sure you can’t miss it.
    The recurring phrases in Genesis 1 are built around two significant words— good and living. Everything God created was good, and that speaks of the essence of the creative act. The purpose of that creative act, though, is centered in that second word—everything was created for life. The sweeping movements of the creation of the universe, the