A minister writes: ‘To the average eye, it was a mutilated piece of marble. The aborted sculpture had been abandoned a half century earlier…but a young artist named Michelangelo saw something in that stone others did not. Chiselling the eighteen-foot block of marble would consume nearly four years of his life, but that seemingly worthless stone was destined to become what many consider the greatest statue ever sculpted…Michelangelo resurrected a dead stone and, breathing his artistry into it, brought David into existence. As he chiselled…he believed the masterpiece was already inside the stone. All he had to do was remove the excess stone so David could escape. He didn’t see what was. He saw what could be…He didn’t see the imperfections in the stone. He saw a masterpiece of unparalleled beauty. And that is precisely how the Artist [God] sees you. “We are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” Every work of art originates in the imagination of the artist. And so you originated in the imagination of God. You were conceived by God long before you were conceived by your parents. You took shape in the imagination of the Almighty before you took shape in your mother’s womb.’ Regardless of what others think of you, or what you think of yourself, God sees you as a potential masterpiece. To see yourself as anything other than that is to devalue and alter your true identity. And it’s in discovering your true identity that you discover God has a plan for your life.

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.