Our David

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

Rob Bell told a story last week in Atlanta that surfaced in our discussion during worship this past Sunday. It's been on my mind ever since.

Two groups of artists participated in an experiment in which both groups were assigned the task of forming artwork from clay. One group was asked to focus on quantity of artwork while the other was asked to focus on quality. The results were interesting. The quantity group produced, in the end, quality art. After each piece was shaped, the group learned from their mistakes. They adapted their art-making, improving upon each piece. The quality group, on the other hand, sat around theorizing about the best way to make the art. They may have had some great ideas, but we will never know. After all their discussion, all they produced was a dead lump of clay.

This served as an example as well as a warning to our faith community. We can spend our time deconstructing the ways mission does not work. We can even theorize about ways to promote the good, the beautiful, and the true. In the end, however, what matters is that we get our hands dirty. May God guide those hands as we construct and mold and chisel whatever piece of His Kingdom it pleases Him for us to shape.

Only now, let us begin. After all, our David is somewhere inside the slab.