A Creative Process: Based on Yeshua's Life, Sacrifice, and Resurrection

(This post was originally penned on 2/21/2018, during Lent season. However, beyond Lent, there's a SOULbriety pilgrimage that invites us into an integrative, redemptive creative process—personally and collectively.)

I invite you to first tune in to the 12-minute companion podcast. Then, go deeper in your meditative reading.

The SOULbriety Pilgrimage

The SOULbriety Pilgrimage is just another way to describe the sober reality we give to our spiritual + physical inheritance and the experience of the ever-increasing frequency of eternal alertness.

Every pilgrimage of SOULbriety will include a pathway for us to enter into wide-open spaces of holy audacity.

Although the SOULbriety Pilgrimage is mainly about our interior lives, it has a way of informing our temporal pursuits with an eternal perspective. Thus, this Lent season (and beyond) will invite us to deepen + broaden our communion pursuits.

This communion is a caravan of people eager to prepare to remember the Person and Presence of the Resurrection.

In this meditation, we will consider three elements that will reframe the way we consider our creative process—life, sacrifice, resurrection (and repeat).

The Creative Process Is About Meaningful Connections

What if this Lent, you become more acutely aware of how you uniquely embody + reflect facets of God's redemption in your creative process? When I speak of redemption, I'm referring to the return to your belovedness + birthright—spiritually and culturally, personally and collectively.

Because creativity plays an essential role in redemption, it will take on many expressions. So be very clear that the creative process isn't reserved for "artistic" people. In my opinion, creativity is about reflecting the joy + justice you notice, nurture, and embody—uniquely as you, whether in your sorrow, scribbling, speaking, painting, or parenting...

Whatever was taken away from you or misappropriated, redemption goes back, retrieves it, and reoffers it to you—this is Sankofa. Sankofa is a word in the Twi language of Ghana that translates to "Go back and get it" (san - to return; ko - to go; fa - to fetch, to seek and take).

Redemption embodies the spirit of Sankofa and dares to empower us to go back and reconnect with the Beloved, the most genuine parts of ourselves and others—as we lay hold of our gifts.

The sacredness of Sankofa will fuel a significant part of your creative process. First, the inner, then the outer activities, which you engage in making meaningful connections between God's presence in your life and the divine disclosures the Holy Spirit imparts to you about your life + identity. This impartation helps you rest in releasing the things that must die/depart to make room for new life—resurrection life.

As you pause to discern and understand redemption through your creative process of life, sacrifice, and resurrection—you will become a more receptive co-witness and co-conspirator of Yeshua's companionship in your life as He pursues your heart and your creativity.

Life, Sacrifice, and Resurrection - A 3-Faceted, Creative Process

Thankfully, it is through Yeshua's life, sacrifice, and resurrection that you and I have been retrieved (Sankofa) from darkness and restored to light in our belovedness.

These three-faceted realities are not linear; instead, think of them as yielding to one another in communion, not in isolation.

1. Imbibe Yeshua's LIFE

Drinking deeply of the Beloved is about absorbing His pastoral + prophetic presence in your life. In other words, pay attention to how your thirst is satisfied personally and collectively as you live and move and have your being.

MEDITATE: Your creative life is tethered to the Source of Life. The reservoir of your creativity—the Creator.

2. Offer up SACRIFICE

Scripture reveals that Yeshua is the fulfillment of all sacrifices under the New Covenant. Believers are called to offer sacrifices of praise and generosity before God. Hebrews chapter 15, verses 15:

MEDITATE: "Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name." This is the priority of praise.

and verse 16:

"Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God." This is the priority of generosity and sharing + tending to each other.

To sacrifice is to engage our whole hearts to have an encounter through our vulnerabilities. Our creative process is a vulnerable place—it will not be in light of what we give up but what we gain because we incessantly create regenerative space for an audacity to praise a God of resurrection.

3. Experience the harvest of RESURRECTION

On the 14th day of the first Hebrew month—Nisan, Yeshua sacrificed His life. He rose from the dead on the 16th of Nisan, the Feast of Firstfruits. I Corinthians 15:20-23 reveals Him as “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep."

Context: Firstfruits refers to the first portion of the harvest. Yeshua rose as the first to be bodily resurrected, and all who trust in Him will also rise from the dead bodily in the final harvest.

(Dig deeper: a firstfruits ceremony is described in detail in Deuteronomy 26:1-11.)

One song on repeat to take me/us deeper as I/we pray and embody resurrection:

Grave Clothes from the album Tribl by Maverick City

My soul just won’t leave these words from Grave Clothes:

Well, I walked out of my grave clothes

And I came out in a new robe

I was buried there for too long

Now I come alive in the One who has conquered it all.

Recognize Your Creativity And Your Creative Process Through The Creator

Although we embrace God's irrevocable promise that we, too, will be bodily raised from the dead, in Romans 8:23, Paul shares that as the redeemed + beloved, we right now possess the “firstfruits of the Spirit”. This prophetic promise beckons us to recognize heaven's creativity here on this earth through our grief + growth in meaningful ways.

Our daily encouragement from the Holy Spirit (Ruach) gives us a foretaste of the resurrection in the ongoing experience of our day-to-day encounters, which reminds us that there is a more significant measure to come through our Beloved's life, sacrifice, and resurrection.

We can most certainly discover that frequently, it is in the minutia of living and being that we experience the harvest of the resurrection life of Yeshua. He delights to creatively shepherd every square inch of our being and doing in the unlikely places of our creative process in our lives, sacrifices, and resurrection.

Until next time,

Scribble. Speak. From your soul.

LINKS FOR FURTHER DISCOVERY

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Scripture passages in order of aforemention: Acts 17:28; 1 Corinthians 15:20-23; Deuteronomy 26:1-11; and Romans 8:23.