Being creative means learning to meet a need, a chore, or a task from a different point of view. Creative solutions are imaginative, inventive, ingenious, innovative, or original. In this character strip, Pudge shows his creativity when the ping-pong ball is hit into a hole and he cannot reach it. Pudge finds a garden hose, turns on the water, and fills the hole so the ball will float. Pudge finds a creative solution!
When Pharaoh proclaimed the edict to kill all Hebrew baby boys, Moses’ mother was creative in devising a plan to hide baby Moses in a basket in the Nile River. She must have known that Pharaoh’s daughter frequented the area. When Pharaoh’s daughter saw the baby and heard him cry, she had compassion on him. Moses’ sister, Miriam, asked if she could go get a Hebrew woman to nurse the child, and Pharaoh’s daughter agreed. Miriam brought Moses’ mother. God honored this creative idea. Moses was attended by his own mother and received an all-expenses-paid rearing in the very house of the one who issued the death edict. (Exodus 2:7, 8)
When Daniel and three friends were taken into Babylon, they were required to eat meat that had been offered to idols. But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the king’s meat. He requested that the prince in charge allow Daniel and his three friends to eat pulse (vegetables) and drink only water for ten days. Then they would be compared with the ones that ate the king’s meat. “At the end of ten days their countenances appeared fairer and fatter in flesh than all the children which did eat the portion of the king’s meat.” (Daniel 1:15) Daniel found a creative way to maintain his Biblical convictions.
Jesus was teaching in a home in Capernaum. A crowd gathered and filled the house so there was no room left. Four men carried on a stretcher a man who was sick with the palsy. Because there were so many people in the house, they could not get the sick man near Jesus. They made it happen by taking the man to the roof of the house, removing part of the roof, and letting the man down through the ceiling right in front of Jesus. (Mark 2:1–4) Many homes had a removable roof section that was used for celebrating the yearly Feast of Tabernacles (or Booths), a remembrance of the time the Jews spent in the wilderness. Booths were made without roofs so the stars could be seen. The four men found a creative way to get this man to Jesus to be healed.