Will You Harness a Creative Soul?

I am a creative soul, and from time to time I need to express myself. These days I have an outlet through words, through thinking and writing. Other times I have had my medium in music, and other times again, in drawing. I like crafts, but any sort of technique is like a tool for potential outlets of my inner need to turn inside out.

I get responses, and they vary, but always there are some that see opportunities in harnessing my creative energy, to make it into a business, to steer it to be productive in our common field of life. I am nice. I listen to the suggestions. Sometimes I may even be flattered, but in the end, I feel the strong urge to resist any such limitation to my expressions. It feels a bit naughty, but it is not. I have not given any promises, not asked to be a pool of potential energy for a system or any social machinery.

As a creative soul, I must be free, and my freedom is the choice not to be bound by others’ formative urge. In a sense, if they see potentials in making a business out of my drawings, recordings of my music, they are imposing their own practical creativity on me. If they want my writing to serve their politics, it is an expression of their own creative zeal. Additionally, if they see my creative edge and hope to see all that energy poured into something else – since I have so much energy – they impose their own creative administration on me.

Some times I follow the lead; and invariably I regret it. Still, I will do my duty until the task is completed. It leaves me singed. It burns me out. Do not harness a creative soul.

The creativity in us is a God-given feature; it is part of being created by the Creator as creative beings. I am redeemed; I am set free to live in communion with God. I am a Christian. Yes, in this relationship I am bound, blissfully so. In Christ I live; I am a new being, and I dwell by the source of everlasting love. Naturally, in this sense my creativity is reflective; I do not want to express destructive thoughts.

 In this field there has also been a request, perhaps not clearly spoken, but a request nonetheless, to always, in all I do, relate to God and his world.  So, if I say something else, I disappoint. I disappoint the expectation that I, with my energy for writing, always should shout from the rooftops, like a prophet. I understand the urgency, the zeal, the sense of necessity in always pointing out the truth of God’s Word. But I cannot be harnessed by others to say, to think, to express what they feel should be said by my voice.

I have no objection to business, to drawings being made into something we buy and sell. I have no objections to the industry around recording music production. I have no objections to contributing to the common good, using my abilities. I have no qualms about expressing life-sustaining truths found in interactions with God in his Word. I have no objections to proclaiming Christ as Lord and Saviour.

Still, the expressions are mine, and mine to give. They must have the freedom to well up in me as a creative soul. I will not harness it; for by self-imposed structures, I hold it down, and it benefits no one. It may simply lead me into depression. A creative soul must have freedom of expression; but this freedom is never unharnessed in itself. It meets the good intentions in ethical charges; for the One who created me, also created you, and He loves us both.