March, 2015

The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands (Ps 138:8 ESV).

In 1463, the authorities of the cathedral of Florence, Italy, purchased a huge, sixteen-foot-tall piece of white marble. They commissioned a sculptor from Sienna to carve a figure that would be displayed prominently. The marble was so faulty, though, that the sculptor abandoned the task. Another Florentine artist was commissioned, but he, too, found the task impossible and gave up. The marble was placed in a warehouse, where it remained for almost forty years before a twenty-six-year-old prodigy was asked if he could make the abandoned and mutilated marble into anything significant. He said he could. Four years later, the masterpiece statue “David” was unveiled. Michelangelo had transformed the “worthless” marble into something majestic.

The original David, the king of Israel after whom the statue was named, once wrote, “The Lord will work out his plans for my life—for your faithful love, O Lord, endures forever. Don’t abandon [forsake] me, for you made me” (Ps 138:8). In the same way that Michelangelo had worked on a faulty piece of marble until he completed the task others had abandoned, so the Lord looked at the flawed David and knew what he wanted to make of him.

David knew it, too, so he could say, “The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me” The assurance that the Lord had a plan and that he was capable of bringing it to fulfillment was the bedrock of David’s life. It came from a solid conviction expressed in the words “for you made me.” David reasoned that his Creator had a purpose in creating him—the divine artist had a vision of what he could be—and, accordingly, was not about to give up on him. This was not just wishful thinking, because the Lord had shown his “steadfast love” that “endures forever.”

This did not mean that David’s life was a bed of roses. On the contrary, David testified that he was “surrounded by troubles.” But his confidence in the Lord’s “unfailing love and faithfulness” (138:2) was such that he continued to count on the Lord finishing what he had started.

As we seek to “live the life” unto Jesus may we too trust our Creator God to finish the good work he has begun and he will complete.

In His service,

Keith L. Bagwell