This past weekend I read the following in a daily devotional I often read called Our Daily Bread:
For almost 100 years, a huge piece of flawed Carrara marble lay in the courtyard of a cathedral in Florence, Italy. Then, in 1501, a young sculptor was asked to do something with it. He measured the block and noted its imperfections. In his mind, he envisioned a young shepherd boy. For 3 years, he chiseled and shaped the marble skillfully. Finally, when the 18-foot towering figure of David was unveiled, his student exclaimed to Michelangelo, “Master, it lacks only one thing—speech!”
It made me think of the blog I wrote last week, You are a Masterpiece. After reading the devotional I wrote the following in my journal,
We are all flawed, yet beautiful. God’s image seeking to burst forth through our cracks and brokenness. We are like the piece of flawed marble Michelangelo used to carve David. Too often we focus on the flaws, the cracks and imperfections, missing all the beauty and potential.
I love how the author of the story in Our Daily Bread said Michelangelo “noted its imperfections.” He sought them out, he accepted them, in fact he embraced them and he used them to create a masterpiece. Too often we try to hide or deny the “imperfections” that are a part of us.
Kathy O’Connell in her book, Firewalk: Embracing Different Abilities, challenges us to totally embrace who we are, the good and the bad, the different. She writes in her prologue that when we can do this,
We release the struggle to be anything other than who we are, and in doing so, we enter into the perfection that has always been within us.
I love that! I am a masterpiece and I don’t have to be anything other than who I am. Yes I’m middle age, yes I am balding, yes I have to use reading glasses to read, yes I take blood pressure medicine to lower my blood pressure, but I am a masterpiece. And so are you.
Who in your life needs to be reminded that they are a masterpiece? Tell them. When you tuck your child into bed tonight tell them they are a masterpiece. Tonight when you roll over and turn your lights off, roll back towards your spouse and tell them that they are beautiful, that they are a masterpiece. Look into the eyes of your teenager and tell them they are awesome and that you see the fingerprint of God in their lives. As you hold your child with special needs, take note of the imperfections and ask God to show you the beauty and majesty in those imperfections. And then tell yourself, “I am a masterpiece.”