The last exterior brick was laid into place, floors finished, interior walls covered and decorated. But the ceiling still needed to be painted. No one wanted to deal with that. "I've got a friend who's a painter," perhaps one of the workmen said. "Maybe he'll do it. Can't be more than a couple of days' work. He's a young guy. He could probably use the money."
At first, the painter was reluctant. It would keep him from another project he wanted to start. But he finally agreed. I mean, the ceiling. How can you mess that up? Who is even going to notice?
But he approached the job, not as a ceiling to be covered up in paint, but as a canvas. Not as a painter, but as an artist. He visualized something more and began to paint.
When he was just 33 years old, in the year 1508, Michelangelo was approached not to paint the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican, but its ceiling, of all places. He was reluctant to do it. He considered himself a sculptor, not a painter. But despite his reservations, he accepted the commission and painted, mostly flat on his back for hours on end, for four years, until its completion. He did not just paint. He poured out his passion on that ceiling which became not just a backdrop to a beautiful place of worship, but the focal point.
When he painted, did he find himself each day a little better painter? Did the very act of painting not just increase his skill but reveal even more how to follow God into it? Sometimes I am sure, sixteen hours would pass, deep in what he was doing with a brush. Some days perhaps unsure even how to bring into being a simple image, but each day obedient to the task, and a little further along.
If we wait to be fully inspired, we will rot.
Some days we just paint, or run, or write, or be faithful with the laundry, knowing that God is even in this. Faithfulness sticks with it, when we think it doesn't matter or that no one will ever see it. That's what faithfulness does.
We can't see the significance because it is so much bigger than us. Whether mopping a floor, making a presentation before thousands, or taking a math test, His hand is upon us with the same intensity, no gap between the finite and the infinite.
Even when it appears that our work evaporates into thin air, God redeems. That's one of His specialties. God will not just use us. He is using us. And there is tomorrow, and the next day, only to know from whence the manifestation comes, and His faithfulness revealed. It takes time for the images to come to the surface and into view.
Quiet work on ordinary days is never stagnant, but launched into eternity. It is not about exhibiting a finished work, but an ongoing masterpiece of God's own doing. It takes more than just us to complete what only God can do.
Even Michelangelo had no idea his work would last, or matter, or even be noticed way up there on that ceiling, 68 feet up in the air. He just did it. Inch by inch, he painted scenes and stories of the Old Testament on a canvas that measured 134 feet by 44 feet -- all 5896 square feet-- not just a pretty fresco, but the Word of God in pictures that generations could "read" and know that He is God.
So what am I doing today? How can I be faithful today? God grants each of us a little corner to paint, sometimes just one color at a time with a tiny skinny brush. One layer of paint and then another. Today it may be an overlooked angle under the eaves, yet we are assured there are no remote corners in His Kingdom. Even in our most ordinary days, every action and word are profoundly significant and cumulative.
Faithfulness is not the feverish pitch, but the long days, sticking with it, with often nothing to show for it. God does not see a difference in those seemingly nothing days than in what we see as extraordinary ones. Who is to say that these ordinary days may not be after all even more significant? God multiplies our own deeds, even the simplest brushstrokes in a million spectacular ways.
We cannot grasp the enormity of God. We are not up to the task. But we can trust Him.
Am I unknowingly painting a Sistine Chapel today? Doesn't matter. But am I approaching my work, my relationships, my days as if I am? To bring His beauty and grace here, and write His name all over it.
"If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep the streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music. Sweep the streets so well that all the host of Heaven and earth will have to pause and say, “Here lived a great street sweeper, who swept his job well.” --Martin Luther King Jr.
Only fear the LORD and serve Him faithfully with all your heart. For consider what great things He has done for you. 1 Samuel 12. 24 And consider what inconceivable things He is doing through us.
Even today. Even in this.
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