Do you ever wonder where God is when you’re going through the difficult and unfair times of life? Do you ever wonder, “What good could possibly come from the things that are happening to me,” or “why would God allow them to happen in the first place?”

We’ve all been there at one time or another, but it’s in times like that that we need to remember and hold tight to the truth given to all followers of Jesus Christ in Romans 8:28, which says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

Let me share a world picture that might help us to understand how that works:

On Aug. 27, 1498, when the pope commissioned Michelangelo to create a statue of Jesus and his mother Mary – Michelangelo spent months searching the quarries for just the right type of stone.

When he selected the marble, he wanted to work with, he oversaw its extraction, and arranged its transportation back to his studio. It’s there that he labored over this giant cube of marble for almost 2 years; Sweating over it in the intense heat of summer, and shivering over it through the bitter cold of winter.

He was a man on a mission, and he knew what he was doing! Hammering, and chiseling, and sanding – day after day, and week after week, and month after month – for almost 2 years!

The end result was what we know today as the Pieta. This beautiful, priceless sculpture… picturing Mary holding the body of her firstborn son and her savior, Jesus.

Well today, I want you to understand that, with that same kind of care and precision – God is working on His latest masterpiece – which is you!

Ephesians 2:10 says that “…we are God’s handiwork…”

And just like Michelangelo, God uses different tools to achieve different results. He uses different hammers, a variety of sharp and pointed chisels, and He uses course abrasives as well.

He uses the trials, and tragedies, and the difficult people and circumstances that we experience in life; He even uses our own struggles, mistakes, sins, and the deep wounds that we experience along the way.

He uses it all! “…we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him…”

So I want to encourage you today… that in the most difficult, hurtful, and confusing times of life – when you don’t understand what good could possibly come from what you are going through… let me encourage you to choose to TRUST in the LORD!

He hasn’t given up on you! He’s right there with you even when you feel all alone! In fact, He is already at work, using all that you’ve been through and all that’s happening in your life right now – to create a one-of-a-kind masterpiece! He’s using it all, to help you to think, and act, and BE more and more like Jesus.