[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overflow=”visible” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” column_element_spacing=”default” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” column_position=”default” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” animation_type=”default” bg_image_animation=”none” border_type=”simple” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]As we continue our Carrying Hope series, do you wonder how you are life-giving? Whether our kids are grown, or we never had kids or don’t yet or never will…we all can find purpose in ways of giving life to others.
This week’s blog invites and encourages us about how to start looking for the life-giving opportunities that God puts in your path and, most significantly, in your heart.
“I’ve always been an artist. I love drawing.” “Why do you love it?” Ruby asks. I pause. I’ve never talked to anyone about this before. “When I’m drawing a picture, I feel … quiet inside.”
― Katherine Applegate, The One and Only Ivan
Everything about the Garden of Eden before the Fall spoke of giving life. God made humanity to cultivate this beautiful planet and bring good from it. To bring order to chaos. To create art from the soil. Humanity was made to give life, just as God gave life to humanity. This is one of the ways we reflect Him as His image-bearers.
We have a problem, though.
Somewhere along the way, we are often told we don’t give life or create the way other people do. We stick out and not in a good way. We’re too loud, too bright, too quiet, too plain. Take your pick. So we stop creating and dreaming, and those two things are inextricably linked.
One of the first things we teach children is to wield a crayon across plain paper, to create. And isn’t creating something a way we can give life in this world? Where there wasn’t, there now is. Our entire adulthood can feel like getting back to that little girl and her crayons.
We were made to give life. Every single one of us.
No two of us can give life the same way, though. And isn’t that the best news? To know that I don’t have to give life like you do and vice versa. My messy crayon picture will always look different than yours.
“…Fill the earth and govern it…,” God told humanity (Genesis 1:28). Create, give life, organize, color, build. What a blessed responsibility!
When we live into how God made us, we give life to things. Any something-from-nothing is an act of creation. It doesn’t happen overnight. It grows and builds. We have to carry it for a while, protecting it, nurturing it. And then God tells us when it’s time to release it to the world.
During this series on carrying hope, we want you to dream and hold and nurture what God is putting on your heart. Last week, we asked you to carry hope to the generations, both our spiritual moms and daughters. This week, start looking for the life-giving opportunities God puts in your path and, most especially, in your heart.
Pray: God, please show me the places, relationships, and roles where you’re asking me to be a life-giver. How have you uniquely created me to do this?
Sow: Ask another woman about her dreams, the ones she’s been afraid to put into words, the ones she’s afraid to write down. Encourage her in her act of life-giving.
We have created a journaling page for you to use throughout this series. You may use it as a tool to respond to God as you read and pray.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]