Michelangelo said his masterpieces existed in the marble. Sculptures, he believed, were finished before his work was started.
“I just have to chisel away the superfluous material,” Michelangelo said.
We, too, as humans are formed from the beginning, like lumps of clay molded into treasured earthen vessels. Our lives unfold as to expose and reveal the true essence of our nature and the purpose for which it was created.
Often, in my experience, friction acts as the chisel. The heat of affliction refines and teaches a jagged truth: the world’s stimulation will never satisfy our deepest longing.
Why look outside when the satisfaction we seek is the masterpiece that was with us in the beginning?
For this journey of discovery, the search within, we need to withstand the friction and understand its role. Faith allows us to accept the pressure and surrender the superfluous.
Faith is an unsearchable force, the itching in our hearts that softly speaks to the strangeness of our earthly existence and calls us into belonging. Faith unravels and dismantles extrinsic metrics so intrinsic desires and longings, already spoken into existence, echo in our voices and actions.
Faith reveals expiration dates, for “all that is not eternal is eternally out of date,” C.S. Lewis said, and leads us to seek community with truth, unity with the invisible wisdom that formed heaven and earth – and each one of us.
With resilience and resolution of spirit, we can disregard the mirages and follow the way of what the heart hopes for, where goodness and mercy transform into the tangible.
Faith guides us home.
