My Prayer For 2013

     I was going to write about how disappointing 2012 has been. I was going to go on and on about how someone who saw hope and possibility in everything finally got to his breaking point through the loss of friendships, a ministry he deeply cared for, and various other unwelcome changes and revelations along the way.  I was going to say how I am praying that 2013 is better; but isn’t that our hope every new year? We hope and pray and make resolutions so that the next year will be even better than the last. All that said, I praise God for the blessings he’s brought not only in my life, but in the lives of the people I love.

     This year has been a banner year for one of my oldest and dearest friends. I have watched – sometimes from close by, sometimes from afar – as his life has been transformed by the opportunity to live his dream. I have watched other friends find love, get married, start families, buy their first homes, and have even celebrated as a couple of them released their first books. Praise God for his goodness!

     This past year taught me that I could fall in love again after years of being single, and that the loss of that love was not the end, but the beginning of something else. While it did not last, the relationship taught me plenty about the things that I want in someone I plan to spend the rest of my life with and about the things within me that I need to be aware of in order to one day be a good husband. 2012 also brought a tremendous amount of healing in my relationship with my parents; something I am infinitely thankful for.

     I’ve spent too long stewing and thinking about everything that didn’t go as I had planned or hoped for… all the things and people that I’d considered so important in my life that simply weren’t there any longer. Those thoughts could drive someone mad. Today, as I was driving back from running an errand, John 15 came to mind.

I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.

Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. (John 15:1-6, NLT)

As I was preparing to write this, I cam across a post from a pastor regarding that passage, and it really struck a chord in me:

Jesus is telling us that the Father deals with believers in the same way that gardeners deal with grape vines. Any extra “material” in our lives – “stuff” which does not contribute to the purpose for which He made us – is to be removed by God. This is not the most comfortable word-picture I have ever heard, because it sounds a little painful. To admit the truth, I like some of the things in my life that don’t contribute anything to my fruitfulness as a Christian. Also, from personal experience, I have to admit that God’s process of pruning me has been painful at times.

If you have never seen a grape vine in the autumn after pruning, it is shocking. A pruned grape vine looks like it has been destroyed. This isn’t a haircut – it is open heart surgery. The vine, if it could talk might say, “this doesn’t feel like just pruning – it feels like damage.” And it continues to look and feel devastated throughout the winter. But as extreme as it appears, the ultimate result is that when the growing season returns, the branches put out more and better fruit than before. It is in fact, made healthier by this pruning.

    
     When I say that I pray 2013 is a better year for you, my friends, I mean that I hope that if you are already living your dream that God will continue to flood your life with blessings beyond anything you can ask or imagine. I pray that He shows you His dreams for you, which I can guarantee are much bigger than the dreams you have for yourself.  If you, like me, have struggled to see the beauty in the trials of this past year, I pray that when you look in the mirror, you don’t see damage or devastation. Instead, may you recognize how God is  currently blessing your life even in the worst of time, and may you see God’s handiwork and a life that is being perfected for His use. I pray that 2013 will be your growing season, and that this time next year, you can bask in the blessings of the fruit He has produced in you. The best is yet to come!

May His peace and grace be with you in this coming year and throughout the ages.

Rob

Taking Away

“Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” -Michelangelo

 “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” 

                                                                      -Michelangelo

I’ve spent the past year or so shaking my fist at God. In that time, I left my well-paying job of almost four years, ended a year-long romantic relationship, and have seen several friendships and associations change or disappear from my life completely. In the past year, I’ve fallen and picked myself up off the ground more times than I would like to count; and certainly more times than even those closest to me would know. It has been painful at times, but it has also taught me a lot about the nature of God and how he might see us, his creation.

In his book Drops Like Stars, Rob Bell writes that the artist, Michelangelo, “said that his [sculpture] David was in the stone clamoring to be freed.” That statement is even more impactful if you know a little more about the story of the sculpture. The statue had been started by another artist in 1464. Only the legs, feet, and torso had been roughly shaped by the first artist before he stopped.  By the time Michelangelo took over the task of completing the sculpture, a second artist had been commissioned and failed as well. The unfinished, flawed marble block sat in the yard of the cathedral workshop exposed to the elements for a total of 35 years until Michelangelo began his work on David in 1501 and completed it in 1504.

35 years.  I can’t imagine the shape that marble block must have been in when Michelangelo finally set out to free the David from the stone. That’s the art of sculpture, though. In order to create a masterpiece, you have to take away. You have to shape, mold, and polish. Sometimes the hammer and chisel take out big chunks. Other times, they are used to give definition and create the smallest of details.  

I found this tutorial on how to carve a marble online:

The first part of the actual carving is to eliminate those areas of the block that you won’t need—that have nothing to do with your figure and are obviously in the way. If they are big areas, you can just start whacking away at them with a hammer.

If a hammer doesn’t get you anywhere you can already begin to use the pointed chisel—a big thick one.

Hold its point to the block and strike it with your hammer. If you held the chisel at an angle to the block instead of straight down, a little splinter or chip ought to fly up and sail across the yard. Isn’t that a ridiculous mess after such a blow? And at this rate won’t it take forever to eliminate all the fat around your statue?

Yes, depending on what you mean by forever.

And so you begin to “carve”—that is, to chip. Little by little—a chip at a time—you get rid of all the stone on the outside of your projected figure.

When all the unwanted marble is gone, you can put the pointed chisel away and take up the second great tool—the fork-chisel or claw-chisel. That is the real sculptor’s tool, the one that will give you the feeling of “carving”. Your block is now roughly the same size and shape as your model but its surface is very rugged. The claw-chisel levels that rough surface, pushes down all the peaks or crests and leaves behind fine, shallow, parallel grooves that give your figure a wonderful “work in progress” look.

The Master Michelangelo himself stopped here as far as tools go. After the David he never again used the flat chisel, which leaves the marble surface absolutely smooth. He thought the striations or little grooves the claw chisel makes gave greater life to the surface of his figures.

Though so far we have been talking about only two kinds of tools—the pointed and the claw chisel—understand that you will use various sizes of each.

You might start out chipping with a pointed chisel as big around as the neck of a wine bottle and finish chipping with one no thicker than a pencil. The same goes for the claw chisels, which come in all sizes. Michelangelo “finished” the details of his figures, such as the eyelids and the wings of noses and fingernails and so on, with very fine claw chisels. Most people—and he himself when he started out—would carve those with a fine flat chisel.

The fourth kind of chisel has a curved tip, curved like a fingernail. You use it in places where the flat chisel doesn’t fit because of its squareness.

Your statue is now carved. Probably you will want to polish it. Use files first, then take some rough sandpaper and start sanding. That rough sandpaper will take out the big digs in your surface but also scratch it all over. The next size sandpaper, a finer size, will take away the scratches the first one made—but that too will leave scratches. To get the surface faultlessly smooth—like glass or porcelain—you will need at least five or six sizes of sandpaper. The last ones are used with water.

Isn’t that how God works in our lives?

About 4,000 years ago, there was a man named Job. The Bible says that he was “blameless – a man of complete integrity.” (Job 1:1, NLT) He had everything - people, possessions, prestige – until it was all stripped away from him.

His possessions? Gone.

His family? Dead.

His health? Painful boils from head to toe.

The Lord allowed Satan to essentially destroy everything Job had. What was Job’s first response to God? “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.”(1:20) At the end of his story, we see that God not only replaces all that Job has lost, but DOUBLES it.

Even someone who had everything had the potential to be so much more at the Master’s hand.

My hope is in the Master who can sculpt a masterpiece out of a used, weathered clump of marble. He sees us, the finished product waiting to be set free, as He intended us to be. Once the big pieces are out of the way, He works on refining the finished product.  The promise He has for each of us is so much bigger than anything we can begin to imagine. I pray that even through the trials and chiseling away, God will give us the strength to trust His mighty, yet steady and gentle hand and the eyes to see the beauty He is creating not only in ourselves, but each other.

Be Blessed.