God is the (only) Artist
To say—
God is the only Artist—
is to name a reality too vast for us to behold,
yet too intimate to ignore as it is right in front of us.
He alone calls forth creation from the void.
God’s first act of beauty—
a Word.
A Word that flares into galaxies,
into oceans,
into breath
As a dance.
We are born into God’s imagination.
This refractive cosmos.
Whatever we call our art
is already participation in what has been given
Through the Spirit's call.
Our pigments are gifts of earth.
Our clay is shaped by unseen histories.
We never begin with nothing.
Only God does.
And yet—
this Artist of eternity does not finish the canvas without us.
God paints with patience.
God paints with humility.
The New is withheld
until our trembling hands add their fragile strokes.
Beholding Jesus's glorified wounds,
God chooses to wait.
The resurrection—
not conclusion,
but invitation.
Co-creation into His wounds.
As if the divine masterpiece required our faith.
As if our willingness to enter the unfinished work
were necessary.
What kind of Artist entrusts the final movements of His creation
to apprentices?
Only One who loves so recklessly
that God will not complete without us.
Nowhere is this mystery more radiant than in the Eucharist.
Grain planted.
Harvested.
Crushed.
Kneaded into bread by human hands.
Grapes pressed.
Fermented.
Tended through the long patience of generations.
These are the offerings of human making—
ordinary, earthy, fragile.
And into them
the eternal Artist pours His presence.
His own life.
His own blood.
Bread and wine become body and life.
It is not that we make the sacred.
Nor that God imposes it upon us.
The miracle is wrought—
in collaboration through the Spirit.
The table becomes the great studio.
The altar, the palette
where heaven and earth touch.
The Eucharist—
the supreme co-creation:
human cultivation and divine gift
bound together into one luminous whole.
The kingdom comes—
not by God alone,
nor by us alone,
but by our becoming artists within God’s art.
Risking faith.
Shaping offerings.
Breaking bread.
Pouring wine.
To call God the only Artist
is to confess the source,
the ground of being,
the mystery of all making.
To accept His invitation
is to discover that every faithful gesture—
a canvas,
a seed,
a table—
is already part of His unfinished masterpiece.
And yet—
this task is not for eternity.
It belongs here,
to the fragile span of our days.
Only now can we plant seeds that die and rise.
Only now can we knead bread with weary hands.
Only now can we forgive,
while wounds are still raw.
Only now can faith risk itself in the dark.
This side of eternity
is the studio entrusted to us.
A brief and holy time
for brushstrokes that cannot be made again.
In that momentary shadow,
paradoxically, is the substance of things hoped for.
The New will not come without us.
That is our faithful, Spirit filled task,
our irreplaceable offering.
Creation itself is waiting for our resounding Yes.
Makoto Fujimura, 2025 (see "Art and Faith: A Theology of Making" to journey deeper)