God Creates with Deliberate Restraint
If you’re anything like most people, you’ve opened the Bible like any other book and started on the first page. Genesis 1 is so familiar that you can probably quote parts of it even if you aren’t a Christian. There’s been a great deal of debate about evolution and creationism, so perhaps you think about that; there’s some conversation around the creation of woman from man, so perhaps you zero in on that. There are so many things that pull our attention in this creation account that it’s easy to just miss the actual creation happening in it. And why it’s weird.
I remember when I first noticed it. I opened Genesis and found myself half-skimming, feeling already familiar with the story. Then suddenly, I froze and re-read.
“The first day.” “The second day.” All the way to “the seventh day.”
God doesn’t create all at once. He creates in stages. Why??
I was completely baffled, because… well, if I was God and I wanted to make something, I’d just snap my fingers and presto, there it would be! Like this book; if I had the power for it to just spring into existence, perfect, of course I would do it!
Part of why it takes so much time is because I have to figure out what I’m doing as I’m doing it. I have to break it into parts and do it one part at a time, and the end result will emerge because of my efforts, far more detailed than the original idea in my head and probably a little different than I anticipated.
And because I am working on it in pieces (presuming it would need no editing, because of course God’s creation wouldn’t include flaws), to me, it’s still less-than, because it is quite literally lesser than the completed book. I’d say, “It’s just a work in progress,” or, “It’s not complete,” or even “Wait until I’m done.” Like a puzzle halfway through, I’d want to be clear that you weren’t seeing the correct, intended picture yet.
Our creative process is bound by limitations… no matter how we strive against them.
God is not held back by any of our limitations. The creative process cannot hold discovery to one with omniscience, nor is God forced to dwell as we are in space and time. What’s more, He doesn’t just treat each day like it is incomplete; He goes out of His way to affirm, “It is good” at the end of every day.
And I want to be clear, this is pre-Fall, God-defined Good. If I imagine myself as an angel, watching him create on Day 1, and then He who is unblemished Goodness says, “It is Good!” I’d cheer and be like “Woah look what He made, this is amazing!” and honestly think that was it. God stopping and saying it’s Good, to me, would indicate that He is finished.
But it doesn’t indicate that He’s finished. Instead, it is a way for God to demonstrate that He values process. He doesn’t just want the end result at the end of the week; He has something to reveal in every layer, every phase. In fact, He values it so much that He chooses to restrain Himself and His boundless power, not just once or twice, but over and over again. He elects for limits on what He is making.
The whole creative process is actually marked by limits. Boundaries are drawn between night and day; edges are given to sea and land; daily, there’s a choice to say, “This far, and no further,” and to affirm that such limits are good.
This is so countercultural for us today! How many commercials promise “limitless” possibilities? How effectively does Elphaba pull on our heart strings as she sings: “Unlimited… The future is unlimited!”? What is the real promise of efficiency, if not to erode the power of limitation in our lives? Yet God, who is by His very nature unlimited in the only true sense of the word, chooses limits over and over in His creative account.
More than that, it shows that God values rest as foundational to creativity. To really hammer that point home, Day 7 is included in the creation account… A whole equal part of creation that is actually not about continuing to make anything: Sabbath. Meaning that rest is counted as part of creativity not just during the “night” between days, but as a regular rhythm of extra reflection. God goes on to command His people to Sabbath, as well; not just to set aside farming, but to set aside chores.
For creatives, this is particularly rich and challenging. Our work is not confined to a 9 to 5 schedule, and it feels very directly connected to us finding as many opportunities as possible and “hustling” as hard as we can. If we do get a day of true rest, and we let ourselves not “make up” for it with chores or more creative work, usually, we justify it with, “Well, I was truly exhausted.”
But that’s not an appropriate vision of Sabbath. It can’t be, because God can’t get exhausted. He is not depleted, but delighted.
The Bible tells us plainly, with the urgency with which it warns against idolatry or commands us not to steal or kill, that we need to Sabbath the way God did. We need a day to reflect, to celebrate what’s been done, and to enjoy creation.
How often in our creative work do we really reflect and enjoy what we’ve made? How often do we surrender the work that lies ahead? Or even let things go undone, and trust Him?
For artists this is costly in the same sort of way that it would have been for agrarian cultures in Biblical times. Since our hours are often unbounded, setting things aside weekly is a real sacrifice, real opportunities lost, even real frustration to professional relationships. But the cost of not embracing limitations is higher. I’ve watched it drive many artists out of the city, burned out and bitter.
People like to dream about what they’d make without limits. What kind of films they would make, what kind of music they would make, if they didn’t have to worry about budget or time constraints or could hire anyone they wanted. But limits are essential to creative inspiration; that’s why prompts like Inktober, or deadlines like NaNoWriMo, yield outpourings of creative work that other times of the year just don’t. Some of the projects I’ve done that have had the biggest reach have been inspired explicitly by limits, such as Motherland, a film which embraced the limits of Zoom as a form, or Lobe Yourself, which used a tiny bedroom I knew I could access. Both of these films were accepted into and even won awards in festivals, despite my budget being 3-6% that of other filmmakers’ in the same spaces.
I think the temptations we face in our creative lives fly in the face of God’s design for creation: temptations to hurry, to devalue incomplete works, to make things perfectly with no need to edit, to be “unlimited” and “think bigger” evermore, to hustle or else risk missing out on the next and the next and the next opportunity…
Yet God tells us sternly in Exodus 20:8-11: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. For six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God; on it you shall not do any work… For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and everything that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day; for that reason the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”
Maybe the command to Sabbath has never been compelling enough for you. Maybe you know it’s something you’re supposed to do, but it’s too hard, too big of an ask, and you don’t feel like you can muster the discipline.
Instead, can you find the inspiration in God’s own example? Instead of a should, might such a style of creation be a could? Instead of shame for overworking, perhaps there’s something positive to glean in this vision for making things with deliberate restraint.
God shows us that true power is not in doing everything at once, but in choosing what not to do.
Perhaps we could trade exhaustion for holiness.
