Here’s a question I encountered online this week. God created. Is he still creating?

The creation week narrative in Genesis 1 and 2 describes everything that God made in six days and on the seventh day he rested. He said that his work was finished when he saw that everything was good. The final act of creation was to make man in his image. “Male and female created he them.” I believe that God created the world and everything in it and that humanity, made in his image, was made to be creative. He told the man and woman to be fruitful and multiply, a command later repeated to the family of Noah after the flood. Consider this passage from Genesis 5:

This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. ² Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. ³ When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. -Genesis 5:1-3

God created man in his own image and gave him the capacity to pass that image down to successive generations. We are created to be creative. But that’s just procreation. Creativity describes things we build, craft, design, including but not limited to music, poetry and visual arts. When the Hebrews left Egypt they plundered the land, by God’s design, taking fabric, gold and all sorts of materials they would use in the wilderness to build the tabernacle. He also gave them the knowledge and skills they would need to do the work.

Then Moses said to the people of Israel, “See, the Lord has called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah; ³¹ and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, with intelligence, with knowledge, and with all craftsmanship, ³² to devise artistic designs, to work in gold and silver and bronze, ³³ in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, for work in every skilled craft. ³⁴ And he has inspired him to teach, both him and Oholiab the son of Ahisamach of the tribe of Dan. ³⁵ He has filled them with skill to do every sort of work done by an engraver or by a designer or by an embroiderer in blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen, or by a weaver—by any sort of workman or skilled designer. -Exodus 33:30-35

We are created in God’s likeness and image and pass that along. We are created to be creative. When done correctly our creativity brings glory and honor to God.