This week one day our ladies’ class had a lesson on beauty and how we become beautiful. Doesn’t every girl want to know the answer to that? One pointer was “do something with your hands” and I heard myself talking about it with a passion that surprised even me. It seemed to stun my students a little bit.

I think that when we do something with our hands, we enter a little bit into God’s character as a creator. It’s almost sacramental. It IS sacramental if we’re being mindful of what we’re doing and bringing into our world something that has never existed before. Even dicing an onion for soup.

I’m serious.

I used to think that artists were from another planet and breathed different air from me. But in my baby steps toward wholeness, I’m discovering that working with my hands is part of being a whole person. Creativity doesn’t only mean canvases and paints and clay. It isn’t only galleries and exhibitions and coffee table books. It means things as diverse as every person who breathes and connects their brains to their hands.

That diversity is what excites me, and makes me want to grab everyone in sight and start making and doing stuff. Then I watched this TED talk and I cried when I saw the beautiful child-friendly MRI machine because I’ve been in them, and know how terrifying it must be for a child.

One man took what he knew just a step further to better the world. Seems like that’s what artists should do, and aren’t we all artists?