As the last notes of a superb piece of music die out in the reverberation of an acoustically beautiful space, there is a finality to the artistry. The music making is over. The evidence of its creation has echoed into silence, despite the existence of the sheet music. A well choreographed dance may never be seen again, despite the existence of the choreographer's dance charts. Music is not written for commitment to paper. Choreography demands to be expressed in dance. Without that creative moment in performance there is no point in the theory codified in choreography and sheet music. Of course with the advent of video and audio recordings our experience of music and dance has changed. They now have a permanence like the plastic arts. They can be experienced and admired using the Internet and other sources of reproduction. Even the tiniest child's first recital is able to be recorded for posterity, much to their chagrin later in life. Our appreciation for the creative capacity ought to be heightened by our ability to experience the experiential arts over and over again.

Our heavenly Father has left us a record of His creative capacity in the world in which we live. Every day is a revelation of His goodness, power, and beauty. Yet, we humans are often entirely deaf to this revelation. This is a clear testimony to our depravity and spiritual ignorance. The result of the divine creation is before us day and night testifying to God as the Psalmist says, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard" (Ps 19:1-3). All of us are tone deaf to the music of God embedded in the world. How beautiful it is when we are awakened to this music and we hear it again. There is no end to it. But are we listening? When God's creative power intrudes upon our deafness, it overawes us. We gasp at the unity, harmony, and overwhelming beauty of the world created for us by God.

"Among the arts, some have in view production, some practice, and others theory. The goal of the last is the exercise of thought, and that of the second bodily activity. Should practice cease, all stops; nothing more is to be seen. Thus dancing and music leave nothing behind; they have no object but themselves. By contrast, in creative arts the work lasts after the operation. Such is architecture-such are the arts which work in wood and brass and weaving, all those indeed which, even when the artisan has disappeared, serve to show an industrious intelligence and to cause the architect, the worker in brass or the weaver, to be admired because of his work.

"Thus to show that the world is a work of art displayed for the beholding of all people; to make them know Him who created it, Moses does not use another word. 'In the beginning,' he says 'God created.' He does not say 'God worked,' or 'God formed,' but 'God created.' Among those who have imagined that the world co-existed with God from all eternity, many have denied that it was created by God, but say that the world exists spontaneously, as the shadow of this power. God, they say, is the cause of it, but an involuntary cause, as the body is the cause of the shadow and the flame is the cause of brightness. It is to correct this error that the prophet states, with so much precision, 'In the beginning God created.' He did not make the thing itself the cause of its own existence.