Last night in our Impact! youth service we played a fun game called “Living Sculptures” (pictures are here). It was a whole lot of fun watching the groups invent and then reinvent one another within their group.
Sculptures are works of art. A person or a point in history captured in solid three dimensions for all time. The sculpture doesn’t change. At least it doesn’t usually change in a positive, beautifying way. The sculpture may erode or be broken or crumble, but that’s not a good change. The sculpture ceases to be what the artist intended it to be.
However, our lives are living, breathing sculptures. We change, or rather The Artist changes us. And the change is good when we are in the hands of the right Artist: our Creator.
Michelangelo’s famous David sculpture came about because Michelangelo said he saw David in the marble and just released him. So too with God, the Artist of our lives: He sees what we can become and is in the process of releasing our beauty, our potential.
God began sculpting your life even before you were born…
Oh yes, You shaped me first inside, then out;
You formed me in my mother’s womb.
I thank You, High God—You’re breathtaking!
Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
You know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, You watched me grow from conception to birth;
all the stages of my life were spread out before You,
The days of my life all prepared
before I’d even lived one day.
…and He is continuing to form you into something beautiful…
As the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand.
…until you become the masterpiece that He saw in you all along…
For 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.
God is the perfect Artist. Let Him work on you today to make you into His masterpiece: a one-of-a-kind creation that brings glory to the Artist.
Craig T. Owens 