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Spiritual Formation: It's All About Freedom
"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free." Michelangelo
I have always loved this quote by Michelangelo when he was asked how he could make a beautiful angel sculpture from a shapeless stone. He added, "In every block of marble, I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it."
Wow. Beautiful. That's the sort of thing God does for us, isn't it?
God sees things in us that we do not see. He sees beauty where we only see scars; he sees our place in this world where we only see our loneliness; he sees us as perfect in attitude and action where we only see our rebellion and mistakes.
He sees a tender heart of flesh where we only see.......well, a big block of stone.
I have said many times that instead of living in our failures and shortcomings it is our joy to live out of who God says we are in Jesus Christ. Instead of striving to make ourselves righteous, we live by grace out of the proclamation of what God has already done for us in Jesus Christ. That, friends, is our legacy from our Heavenly Father. That's freedom. Wrap your arms around it. Rejoice!
"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." 2 Cor. 5:21
You see, the purpose of spiritual formation is not to bind us or stifle us or even cramp our style; instead it is to set us free to be exactly who God made us to be, always under the wing of the One who created us and knows us better than we know ourselves.
Through the quiet of spiritual disciplines we allow space and a place for God to do the chipping and carving. He always, always sees the inner beauty that so often eludes us, and it is his great joy to set us free.
Now give him a chisel and let him go to work!
Greg
P.S. The angel at the top is Michelangelo's Statue of an Angel for the Basilica of San Domenico in Bologna, Italy (1495).
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