Creativity That Aims for EternityShembull

## THE FRAMEWORK TO BE CREATIVE [IMAGE CONTENT] Michelangelo’s David is one of the most famous works of art in the world. The massive 17-foot-tall Carrara marble statue depicts a youthful, but determined, David with a sling and stone ready to topple the giant Goliath. While you're surely familiar with the larger-than-life masterpiece, you might not be as familiar with the story of how Michelangelo received the commission to sculpt it. Michelangelo was not the first artist chosen to sculpt the statue, but rather the fourth. The three previous artists, who had begun the work decades earlier, had either been fired from the project, given up or had died before the work was completed. The incomplete block of marble was relegated to the church junkyard and forgotten for 26 years. In 1500, while taking an inventory of the cathedral workshop, the block was rediscovered, and the search to find an artist to complete it resumed. The marble was so badly damaged, that no other artist (including Leonardo da Vinci) was interested in taking on the project. But Michelangelo saw a masterpiece waiting to emerge from the stone and accepted the challenge. When asked how Michelangelo had made such an exquisite piece, he said, “I created a vision of David in my mind and simply carved away everything that was not David.” In Ephesians 2:10, Paul says, “We are God’s workmanship.” The Greek word for workmanship is ‘poiema,’ from which we get the word ‘poem.’ We are God’s poem, His creative masterpiece. As a believer in Jesus Christ, your new life is an original, never-replicated, one-of-a-kind work in the Master’s hand. God looks at each one of our lives and sees us as a canvas on which He is producing a work of art that will bring everlasting praise to His name. In eternity past, the Master Artist took up the challenge to complete His masterpiece in your life. He saw your ruined life out in the junkyard and set His love upon you, chipping away at all the raw uncut material, until your new life in Christ started to emerge. You have the high privilege of modeling His creativity when you accept the challenge to take up your tools. One day, the good work of your life and creative efforts will be complete. But until that day, He’s making you into something spectacular, a poiema, a true masterpiece.