“Make them just as I commanded you…[with] skill in all kinds of crafts to make artistic designs.” (Exodus 2: 11, 3-4)

I don’t consider myself a creative person. Give me a pattern to follow, however, and I can embroider that countryside scene; give me the steps to a recipe, and I can make delicious cookies. But ask me to color outside the lines by choosing (gasp!) my own thread colors for the needlework or to tinker with a recipe? That’s a risk I rarely - ok, never - take. 

But as I pondered this week’s passage, reading how Bezalel and Oholiab were gifted by God to be creative and artistic with their designs for building and outfitting the tabernacle (2:2-6), God brought to mind a time when, yes, I was creative. Rather, God reminded me how He gifted me with some ingenuity.

God had prescribed plans for the artisans and craftsmen: do “just as I commended you” (2:11). But He also gifted them “with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts - to [overlay their] artistic designs” (2:3) on His blueprint. Theirs was a partnership.

Similarly, God had charged me (I was a stay-at-home Mom) to bring up my young children in His word. Jake and Lauren learned Bible truths in Sunday School and Bible Study Fellowship, truths I endeavored to emphasize at home. I remember only one of these devotional times specifically. I don’t know if they were worried about something, or I was, but I took the verse “Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for us” (1 Peter 5:7), fashioned some makeshift fishing poles, and draped a sheet over some chairs. After we brainstormed things we might be worried about, I wrote them on small pieces of paper and attached one to each pole. I don’t fish, but I know enough about casting to know you’re supposed to cast far away from yourself. So I had them both cast these pieces of paper over the sheet as far away as they could, all the while talking about the Bible verse. God had given me a creative way to illustrate His beautiful promise. They remembered that visual picture enough to start expecting more of the same for our devotional time!

As I ponder that event, in conjunction with this passage about the building and furnishing of the tabernacle, I realize four things: 1) What God tells us to do, we need to do. 2) In the doing, we can choose paint-by-the-numbers obedience with no coloring outside the lines, or 3) we can make His commands more delightful, more beautiful perhaps, if we partner with Him creatively. 4) Above all is recognizing that artistic spark comes from God, whether it’s a pretend fishing pole or beautiful “designs in gold, silver, and bronze” (2:4).  

God chooses to partner with us (see 2:2). What’s your creative bent? Singing? Painting? Drama? How could you use your talent to make, for instance, your devotional or prayer time a combination of obedience and creativity? 

No creative bent? I hear that. Let God know you’d like to do more in your service to Him, and see what “kind of craft” (2:3) He sends your way. He does that for me every week with CD inspiration.