I love the concept of God sculpting my soul.
My soul is like a piece of marble, hewn from the quarry of life.
I came to God as a chunk of rock–dirty, marred and rough. It took a sculptor’s eye–God’s–to see the perfect soul within.
He just had a little work to do to make my soul as round and perfect as a white sphere.
Michelangelo used to visit the Carrara quarry in the Tuscany region of Italy. There, he hunted for the perfect slab of marble for his work.
He’d walk among the stones looking at the veins in the “wild” rock. He sought the piece that would bring forth Moses, or the Pieta, maybe even David. He had an eye for beauty.
Michelangelo looked at raw marble three-dimensionally, seeing past the ragged edges to the “life” within.
God’s like that, too, when he examines my life.
Sculpting my soul
The life experiences God takes me through are opportunities for that craggy piece of rock that’s my soul, to be shaped and formed.
In my mind, someday I’ll reach heaven with a soul in the perfect shape: a white sphere without angles–smooth, polished, glowing and whole.
But to whittle down my soul to that perfect sphere, means sometimes chunks have to be jack-hammered away.
Sometimes the pieces need to be broken off in large chunks. Sometimes like a calving iceberg, other times like Michelangelo’s chiseled tapping.
Each chip knocked from my rocky soul brings me closer to the core of who God created me to be: in his likeness, whole and complete.
I like to think the longer I’m a Christian, the smaller and more precise the taps need to be.
The need for major chunks to be removed
Sometimes, however, I err and the hammer and chisel come down hard. I
t hurts to realize what I thought were steps closer to perfect, actually only displayed a marred vein of self within my stony heart.
It’s challenging to realize I need to be thankful God recognized the slab needing removal. My concept of perfection doesn’t always match his.
I’m confident one day I’ll get so close to holiness, all it will take is a little polishing with water and sandpaper.
But until then, I’ll focus on delighting that God is the sculptor of my soul. His eyes see a multi-dimensional vision of who He created me to be.
Thanks be to God.
How God sculpts a soul
Enjoyed this post! Michelangelo was such a master sculptor, but God is even better! Love it!
I should have included this quote from Michelangelo, which I must have read somewhere and taken to my heart:
“In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.”