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Editor’s Note: The adult coloring book market burst onto the publishing scene in 2013 with British artist Johanna Basford’s book Secret Garden: An Inky Treasure Hunt and Coloring Book.Johanna Basford, Secret Garden: An Inky Treasure Hunt and Coloring Book (London, England: Lawrence King Publishing, Ltd., 2013). On page 73, you’ll read an interview with illustrator Daniel Sorenson about his process of creating one of these works of collaborative art. In this beautiful reflection, author Val Starkgraf talks about an unexpected gift for coloring books—an accessible medium of encounter with God for those who are poor or homeless.

Our Great God, Lord of all creation, is dazzling in creativity when it comes to creation’s diversity. The marvel is that across geology, time, seasons, and even the hours of each day every created thing not only has its perfect place within creation, but God created everything down to the minutest detail with profound and opulent beauty. As creatures made in his image, humans are God’s unique creative blend of soul and dust. Our own artistic creativity in its many forms reflects that image of divine Creator. Art is an act of creation; it is forming something for self-expression and often for beauty. As Paul writes in Ephesians 2:10, we are God’s poiema,The Greek word poiema means ”something created, workmanship.” It is found twice in the New Testament, in Ephesians 2:10 and Romans 1:20, both referring to God’s work of creation. One commentator translates it as God’s “work of art.” thus our artistic expression is the place where soul and dust collide.

Though my “dust” was born into the twentieth-century developed world, I have long been a quiet contemplative and an artist, blessed to live in awesome places of great nature even long before I knew God as the source of my blessings. My own season of homelessness was cast into a season of contemplative solitude in a secluded canyon hermitage: the ultimate “Father/daughter camping trip.” It was a season for rest, for prayer, for listening to the Holy Spirit, and for visio divina through art.

I love to create reflections of creation in many media, but the challenge posed by living off the grid and two miles from water was to find media that was inexpensive and portable, without a drying process or extensive cleanup. I tried painting, but the paint did not dry in cool canyon nights, and paintbrushes were annoying to clean. Crayons, colored pencils, paper, and coloring books became my pragmatic solution: visio divina on a dollar-store budget. And then came the “adult coloring” books.

Because I have been working with small children for decades, I know that coloring quiets the soul in the same way knitting and yoga can. And among the plethora of adult coloring books, many incorporate biblical text and hymns into line art, and the best of them marry image to text. The challenge is to make someone else’s work my own, but the freedom is this: when I am tired after a long day, no thought is required to color. All that is required of me is to open myself to what God is speaking to me through the images and text. Coloring brings spiritual, meditative focus to a visual plane in a readily accessible way. When I color contemplatively, I open myself up to be inspired via imagination to play with color, and the focus required to stay within the lines helps remove distractions beyond meditation on the text. It is visio divina, not creating an image, but bringing life to an image through color.

Coloring is not only a way to be quiet and to create, but for children it also creates community around a table with shared crayons. It is a time of quiet conversation, collaboration, and mutual inspiration. Contemplative coloring is no different, but the conversation and the collaboration are with God: it is an invitation for deeper communion with him in a visual and kinesthetic way. I recently colored Psalm 30:5b, and God called me to examine colors for “weeping,” “night,” joy,” and “morning.” To color a storm, a night sky, a sunrise, I had to remember these things and remember other times God called me into communion with him in real storms, real night skies, and real sunrises. And gradually, mere words and colorless pictures became vibrantly alive on the page and alive in my soul. Connection with God occurs there as in no other way.