Have you ever wondered why He didn't just make it all at once? He could have. Jesus tells us in Matthew 19:26, "with God all things are possible."
I'll tell you what I think. I think God creates in steps because He loves the process. He loves to create. He finds great joy in seeing things unfold. Of course God has an end result in mind, but the process is just as important. And this is something we humans don't understand naturally.
We get so eager to get results. We get so impatient to have answers. We want to do it right the first time all the time. We want instantaneous outcomes. Our entire lives are a process of unlearning our tendency to want things now. God has to retrain us into His way of thinking. Think about it. No matter how old we are we are going to have to wait for something. This can't be a coincidence! We start learning to wait as a baby. We want our food now. We want to be held now. Even the most attentive of parents can't satisfy their newborn baby immediately all the time.
The older we get the longer we have to wait for things. Remember what you would be feeling a week before Christmas when you were a litttle kid? You couldn't wait! You couldn't wait to rip into the presents and see what you were given. '
Every stage of life has its own waiting. If we ever catch on, we learn to wait well. We learn that God is using the waiting time to do His work. The process time is when some of His most intricate and important work is done.
This is what creativity is -- a process. We are made in God's image so this means we all have it in us to create in some way. And the world will be a better place if we do this. But we shouldn't do it just for results. We should do it to enjoy the process like God does. If God does it, it must be a good thing.
I don't know where you're at this Christmas. I know some of us have experienced horrendous tragedy this year. Others of us might have had a very ordinary year with not much going on. Still others probably had a great year. No matter what this year was I pray that this Christmas will be a blessed one for you. I pray this Christmas will find you celebrating Jesus' birthday with grace and gratitude and kindness. I pray you will know how absolutely vital you are to God and His work here on earth. And I pray you will know that God desires to hang out with you -- to speak with you and to give you His strength.
Merry Christmas.