Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Necessity, the Mother of Invention


Creativity is not just for the artistic types. Take my husband for instance.
A huge chunk of ice had built up in the bottom of our supposedly frostless freezer. My husband and I decided it was time to defrost this sub-zero mass. I took all the frozen food out and put it in a large cooler chest and turned the switch to off. Then my husband set to work.

Later I went to see how things were progressing. I was surprised to see two blow dryers tied from strings hanging from a shelf in the freezer. Something we ordinarily use to dry our hair had been conscripted to help melt ice.


“Very creative!” I said. I was impressed with my husband’s ingenuity. Necessity had definitely become the mother of this invention.

It’s often true that until a need of some sort arises, our creativity and imagination often lie dormant. All types of problems and challenges can become the fertile soil for seeds of resourcefulness to flourish. We become willing to look at things in new ways. We are willing to ask questions and then listen. As we seek for answers, our desire for solutions propels us to try things we had never thought of before. In the process, we are stretched and also often surprised by what we can do when we truly need to.

While some circumstances call forth our best creative processes, other circumstances reveal our limitations and just how much we don’t know. In our humanity, we often come to acknowledge our need for resources beyond our own. We discover our need for God’s Divine creativity and imagination to take over where our efforts are limited or our resourcefulness fails. We seek God when we realize that we need a whole lot more than our own inventiveness.

Thus, when we are surprised by our own creativity or the creativity of others, may we thank Him. And when we are confounded by our inabilities, may we seek Him—the Ultimate Creator!


(c) 2005 Marlene Depler

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