The opening line of the Bible, “In the beginning, God created,” is echoed as a future promise in Isaiah 65:17: “For I am about to create.” In both cases, God is a creative type—an artist—who makes something genuinely new out of something that never before existed. Borne out of God’s abundant power and creativity is the world that was Eden, the world that is in the here and now, and the world that is yet to come. To say that God is an artist is to say too little. But to deny that God is an artist is to misunderstand a distinct part of God’s nature. Out of God’s artistic flare springs new realities that you and I could never begin to imagine. In our darkest days, we should never underestimate the potential for hope expressed in the opening words of Isaiah 65:17: “For I am about to create . . .”