Chiseled features

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is (1 John 3:2).

Like Michelangelo’s partially completed statues, we are all unfinished products—spiritually. As we take time for the Lord’s Word and Sacrament on a regular basis, we are giving the Holy Spirit opportunities to work on shaping us like a master sculptor. It is His desire to make us look more and more like Christ, so He continues to chip away at every sinful part of us that causes disfigurement. Sometimes He may have to cut or chisel deeply to achieve His desired results. Bulges of pride may have to be hacked away until God-pleasing humility is revealed. Sharp edges of greed may have to be broken off so that generosity and charity are revealed. Ugly jealousy and envy must be sanded down into contentment. Lumps of heard-heartedness need to be smoothed into mercifulness and a willingness to forgive.

Of course, we are so far from Christ’s ideal that our all-too-short human lifetimes are not nearly long enough for the Holy Spirit to finish His refining work. Although Jesus has died to atone for our sins and has made us His own, we still struggle with sin every day and every battle that we lose puts another blemish on our spiritual faces that the Spirit must work to remove. His work of sculpting us into Christ’s perfect image will not see completion until we leave all sin behind at death and finally enter the perfection of heaven. But in the meantime we willingly accept the occasional pains that come with having our ugly behaviors changed, because all humans value beauty and Christ is the most beautiful of all. Please join me in praying:

Dearest Lord Jesus, we praise You for Your perfect beauty, the beauty of the very Face of God. We thank You for Your generosity in wanting to share the beauty of this perfection with us. Forgive us, we pray, for choosing so often to make ourselves ugly with our sins. Create in us a desire to seek Your beauty through spending time reading and listening to Your words. Send Your Holy Spirit through Word and Sacrament to bring the beginnings of perfection into our ugly lives. Give us patience and strength to endure the Spirit’s work of changing us into reflections of Your beauty. In Your name we pray, amen.