Creative Margin

Does your family play the garbage game? You know, that game where the trash begins to overflow and you come up with imaginative ways of placing one more piece of trash in such a way that the mass of garbage doesn’t collapse, utilizing every nook and cranny and every physical principle of gravity and balance to your advantage. After all, the one for whom it comes tumbling down is automatically the trash-taker-outer.

That overstuffed trash can resembles our lives sometimes. We fill every moment of every day with something. In the meantime, we stifle our creative juices. There’s no room to be creative because we’re trying to do too many things at once - we’re trying to be all things to all people. Pretty soon, it all comes tumbling down like the end of a Jenga game.

I’ve been challenged lately to make more room for creativity. I’m not talking so much about the work of creating, but the time we need to get alone and relate to our Creator, to dream great things, to plan, to envision, to think creatively. The problem with cramming our lives full of stuff is that we get focused on maintaining the stuff we’ve created and can’t create anything new.

I want to challenge you the way I’ve been challenged. Take a walk, read a book, fill up on something other than the mental junk food of modern media. Take some time to do nothing but read, dream, pray, and envision what God wants to do in, around, and through you. Leave some margin and get creative!