When the great Renaissance artist Michelangelo finished his statue of David, his 16th-century admirers all flooded him with the same question: How did you transform an inanimate chunk of rock into such an incredibly lifelike figure? Michelangelo’s supposed response? “I simply kept chipping away at everything that wasn’t David.”
Strange as it sounds, you and I ought to feel for, empathize with, that raw slab of Italian marble. The hard blow of trial and suffering upon the human spirit makes it feel like parts of you are being hammered at, chipped away, beaten from every possible angle with precision strikes to your heart and soul. And your instinctive and understandable response is “why.”
Why would a loving God allow such forceful cracking and utter brokenness to wreak such havoc? Perhaps it’s because, like Michealangelo and his David, the Lord is chipping away, bit by bit, at those parts of us that aren’t him: God’s working together unto good in the midst human suffering. The challenge of faith thus becomes the loosening of one’s grip on things you hold dear that are not of God’s good design and holy purpose.
By grace, you are being refined, shaped, sculpted for greater beauty and inspiration. And with such grace, and with heaven’s aims in mind, you and I really and truly can suffer well. I’m reading to you from the New Testament letter attributed to James –
My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces patience, endurance, steadfastness. Let [those gifts] have their full effect, so that you may be mature, complete, lacking in nothing.
If any of you lacks wisdom or intelligence, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. But ask with the conviction of faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For the doubter – being double-minded, fickle, and unstable in every way – must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.
Let the believer who is lowly in pain, [the one feeling picked at and chipped away] – boast in being raised up, exalted, lifted on high, while the materially rich are brought low, humbled and humiliated. The well-to-do will disappear, fade away like a flower in the field. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the field. Its grass withers; its flower falls; its beauty and grace fade away. So also with the rich: in the midst of a busy life, they will [dry up and die]. (James 1:2-11)
The writer and lay theologian C.S. Lewis once quipped that most of us don’t really want a Father in heaven but instead a Grandfather in heaven, a “senile benevolence who only wants to see the young people enjoy themselves, and whose plan for the universe is that it might be truly be said at the end of each day, ‘A good time was had by all.’”
What we want, claims Mr. Lewis, is a God who wants nothing more than for us to be happy.
That surely sounds all well and good, but here’s the problem: God our Fatherin heaven yearns for more. God doesn’t just desire our happiness; God yearns for our holiness – our maturity and perfection, our sculpting into the very image of Jesus Christ. Maybe then God allows trial and tribulation to chip away at those chunks of our heart and mind that obscure that divine image.
Through no fault of her own, Jessica was living daily life in a deep pit, enduring a season of traumatic emotional injury, searing pain and intense feelings of loss. One night her phone rang, and on the other end of the line was a wise and trusted friend. At one point her close confidant confessed her sin: “I envy the person that God will make you through this. I wouldn’t want to walk even a mile in your shoes, don’t want to travel the road you’re traveling. But I do want to end up where you are going to end up.”
Yet another case of good belief shared with perhaps bad timing: All Jessica wanted to do was hang up the phone on her close friend. Fast-forward a decade or so later, and those who knew Jessica proclaimed her friend’s prediction spot-on. Jessica had persevered, and perseverance completed its work. She had become more “mature and complete.” Ready to face the day, come what may!
Indeed, the Holy Spirit can and does use even the ugliest things of our lives and world to produce beautiful things. Great and beautiful, wonderful things! Challenging times challenge faithful stewardship of our pain and suffering, in opening ourselves to the Spirit, so that she might use our most difficult times to sow seeds of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and all the rest. And sometimes the seeds that God leads us to sow are not ours for the harvesting. And least not yet!
That work of the Holy Spirit is the solid rock on which I personally stand, as our nation celebrates its 249th birthday, on what to my aching feet feels much like sinking sand.
May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts together, be wholly pleasing and acceptable to God the Father Almighty. By the Spirit, find the courage of humility to suffer well.
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, July 6, 2026, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Fredrick Buechner, C.S. Lewis, and Joel Schreurs inform the message.