We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus. - Ephesians
2:10
Early in the last century, sculptor Gutzon Borglum (1867-1941) gazed at the cliffs of
South Dakota's Black Hills. He envisioned what no one else could - the sculpted faces of
US presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore
Roosevelt.
Borglum and his crew were suspended on ropes 500 feet above the valley floor. They used
everything from chisels to dynamite to create the 5-story-high visages. It took 14 years
to complete the project.
Borglum's housekeeper occasionally went to visit the site. She once asked a worker,
"How did Mr. Borglum know that Mr. Lincoln was in that rock?"
How indeed? Borglum knew what was in the rock because he saw with his artist's eye what he
could create out of the raw material with which he had to work.
And so it is with God. With His artistic eye, He sees the potential in the most
unpromising, hardest human material. With His loving hands, He begins to make of us a
monument to His genius and grace. God "loved us, even when we were dead in
trespasses" (Ephesians 2:4-5), and made us alive in Christ. And He can make you more
and more like Christ - if you put yourself in His hands.
-DHR
In ourselves we may see hardened ground,
Empty spaces that long to be filled;
But God sees our heart, and if we let Him start,
An image of Christ He will build.
-Carbaugh
Our rough edges must be chipped away to bring out the image of Christ.