The Masterpiece Within

Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread. The reading for today titled The Masterpiece Within was written by Kenneth Peterson. Writing in The Atlantic, author Arthur C. Brooks tells of his visit to the National Palace Museum in Taiwan, which contains one of the largest collections of Chinese art in the world. The museum guide asked, what do you think of when I ask you to imagine a work of art yet to be started? Brooks said, an empty canvas, I guess.

The guide replied, there's another way to view it. The art already exists, and the job of artists is simply to reveal it. In Ephesians 2.10, the word handiwork sometimes translated as workmanship or masterpiece is from the Greek word poiema, from which we derive our word poetry. God has created us as works of art, living poems. However, our art has become obscured.

Ephesians 2 verse 1 reads, as for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins. To paraphrase the words of the museum guide, the art of us is already there, and it's the job of the divine artist to reveal it. Indeed, God is restoring us, his masterpieces.

God who is rich in mercy made us alive. As we go through challenges and difficulties, we might take comfort in knowing that the divine artist is at work. Philippians 2.13 tells us, it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his great purpose.

Know that God is working in you to reveal his masterpiece. Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Ephesians chapter 2 verses 1 through 10. As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts.

Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Let's pray. Creator God, thank you for making each of us your masterpieces and part of this beautiful tapestry of your love to the world. It's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen.