When recently thinking about sculpting (something I have never done and probably never will have the talent to do, but have the UTMOST respect for others who can), I have attempted to strip it down to the bare essentials of what the physical act is and put that into clumsy speech.
Sculpting is taking one large piece and chipping away what is unneeded. And so in this "wearing away" or "pruning" process, the true and inherent beauty imagined can be revealed. I liken this to the Holy Spirit and how He takes our raw, unshaped forms and refines us into the beings that He believes we can be. God sees us through eyes we cannot fathom, and if we are saved, they are eyes that do not see us how we perceive ourselves. In perfect love, they see us unblemished, bursting with the utmost potential and making full Christ-like use of the gifts that He so lovingly and carefully engineered into each one of us.
If sculpting artwork of my life were up to me, I believe I would go one of two ways: I would either enhance those qualities of myself that He would not place value in and therefore create far too large a head for the body or a huge foot far out of proportion to the rest. Or I would chip away and chip away at all of my faults and weaknesses until nothing would remain. That would be a very EMPTY nothing. But God, with the utmost integrity and grace, takes great care with the sculpting of our lives. What I am learning is that I need to allow him to slice and chip away (or prune) what He would and remold what remains. In this way, the masterpiece created will resemble what He pictures in us - not what we would see. Isaiah 64:5-6 says that all our righteousness is as filthy rags.' Compared to His mercifully eternal vision, our image of what we should be is a cheap, shoddy imitation.
A thought to remember the next time we try and take matters into our own hands yet again. Relax. Leave this job to God.
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