Central to our universe is the concept of limits: that our creativity is restricted to that which already exists.

As an example, try to imagine what a sixth sense would look like. Science and movies offer their conjectures, but all descriptions of a proposed sixth sense are nothing but combinations of the other five senses. In the same manner, try to conceive of a completely new emotion – like fear or anger – that is not a mixture of existing ones.

Describe a fourth dimension beyond height, width and depth. Think up a new color or a new number. It’s not possible. We are limited by what already is: “There is nothing new under the sun.”

Following this, creativity becomes a misnomer because no person actually creates anything. The best songwriters among us do not make new notes or chords; they only assemble existing ones together in new and interesting ways. The same is true with painting, writing, or any other form of artistry. We are not capable of conceiving anything beyond the scope of what exists.

But consider that perfect qualities such as complete goodness or pure justice, though they are found nowhere on the earth, are nonetheless established in our minds, so that we feel free to judge when something falls short of one of them. It follows that such perfect qualities must exist in some form. Otherwise, we would have no standard by which to make our judgments.

When we think of the act of creation in Genesis, our focus generally drifts either toward its mover (”God created everything”) or its scope (”God created everything“). But for me, it is amazing that God created everything. It was He who decided that there should be three primary colors and not four, though He could have chosen to make four to begin with, and I would have instead marveled here that we cannot fathom a fifth. He is the only true creative Being, and like any great artist, He has left traces of Himself in His works, in order that we should know that the painting did not paint itself.

This world lets us down on a daily basis with promises of fulfillment. Advertisements appeal to our sense that something is missing, claiming that new cell phones or credit cards will fill the gap in our souls, but it is all just grasping at the wind. (And it works so well on us!) We are broken and incomplete, but there is beauty in it: our universal longing to be whole is a constant and tugging reminder of God’s existence.

He is the only true creative Being, and He has not finished creating. At a time still future, He will make all things whole: peace, when all we know is contention; joy, when all we know is sorrow; life, when all we know is death. What we now see through cracked and concaved glass, we will see with perfect clarity.