Thickness of Creative Possibility
June 3, 2008
Greetings, Prayer Team!
Just as I thought to begin writing to all of you about my drawing habits—or what may one day be my drawing habits but are now only my attempts to make habits—I saw out the window a branch of my distant pleasant tree fall to the ground. The tree grows at least a block away from here. Still, it adds to my landscape of green in the summer and frosty white in the winter. I do hope they don’t take out the entire tree. I’d feel better if it was a mere pruning, for there aren’t other trees quite like it out my window.
If I knew how to make pencils for drawing, I would ask them for some of its wood as a memento, carefully drilling out the center, stuffing in the graphite, sealing its top with the eraser, and adding a flourish of a feather for the eraser’s cover.
I would not, however, have made the pencil all on my own. Someone cared for the tree from whence the wooded cylinder came, and someone cut it down. Another person made the tools with which I could form the pencil, and still another tended, gathered, and shipped the materials that made the tools. Someone shipped the eraser materials, the graphite, and the feather to a store where someone stocked them, and where I would have bought them. (We ought to take a moment today to thank our postal carriers for opening the world to us.)
When I sit down to draw, I get out a book full of insights and instructions. I’m still a poor artist on paper, but I am learning, and I owe a certain debt to the author, editors, and publishers for my growing skills. Fear not—I did pay for the book, but it seems to me a small price for the hours of pleasure and learning I have already gained and I therefore feel a debt even though my invoice says “Paid”.
How many people labored to create my sketch book, that bound thickness of creative possibility? Or what multitude brought my Plexiglas view finder to Home Depot, where more than one kind sales representative led me to it?
In a world such as this, where even writing and drawing with pencils cost the time and talents of a multitude, how can I but marvel? And this world is only a poor reflection of the world that will come soon.
Our small daily realities bring together the resources and abilities of great throngs of people. How much more true that is for our largest realities! Jesus Himself designed it that way and prayed that it would remain that way, especially in the church. (See John 17). He and His Father, along with the Holy Spirit, operate on the same principle.
Streams of Light, for example, is a large project. Hypothetically, one person could have donated all $6 million in one shot, leaving the rest of us without even a chance at a profound involvement. Although that sounds easier, countless hearts would have missed God’s call to sacrifice, and in that missed call would not have experienced God’s intense care for their needs.
How grateful we are that our multitude consists, in part, of you.
On behalf of Patsy Wagner,
Heidi C. Corder
Assistant, Office of Philanthropy