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.