Endurance for the Journey, Featured
A Note of Encouragement
For He chose us in Him
before the creation of the world
to be holy and blameless in His sight.
EPHESIANS 1:4 (NIV)
Suffering has inspired and forged more sculptures than one can count – and not just the bronze kind that rest on pedestals in village squares.
Suffering fashions us into a “holy and blameless” image of Christ, much like a figure sculpted out of marble. An artist in Florence, Italy, once asked the great Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo what he saw when He approached a huge block of marble. “I see a beautiful form trapped inside,” he replied, “and it is simply my responsibility to take my mallet and chisel and chip away until the figure is free.”
The beautiful form, the visible expression , of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27) is inside Christians like a possibility, a potential. The idea is there, and God uses affliction like a hammer and chisel, chipping and cutting, to reveal His image in you.
Joni Eareckson Tada
… being confident of this,
that He who began a good work in you
will carry it on to completion
until the day of Christ Jesus.
PHILIPPIANS 4:6 (NIV)
