The Way to Brave by Andy Mcquitty Scot McKnight

Author:Andy Mcquitty, Scot McKnight
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-08-14T00:00:00+00:00

Here’s the challenge that lies before all who seek the way of brave. It passes through brokenness, and each of us as individual pilgrims has the choice to be the broken beautiful or to be the broken bitterful. C. S. Lewis trenchantly describes the stakes of that choice. “Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature; either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself.” 5 When David was broken early in his life, he established the pattern of turning, not away from God in bitter hatred, but toward God in humble trust. One clue to this reality is found in God’s words about David in the New Testament. “After removing Saul, he made David their king. God testified concerning him: ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do’” (Acts 13:22–23). God knew David was a man after His own heart because brokenness had humbled his pride. God knew David was a man after His own heart because brokenness had made him obedient. That’s the new heart that the gospel promises. Having broken us, He wants to make us beautiful.

In 1464, the City Council of Florence commissioned a sculptor to carve a giant statue of a biblical character to stand in front of city hall. Agostino di Duccio went to the quarry and marked off a nineteen-foot slab to be cut from the white marble. However, when the block was removed, it fell, leaving a deep fracture down one side. The sculptor declared the stone useless and demanded another, but the council refused. Consequently, the gleaming block of marble lay on its side for thirty-eight years. Then, in 1501, the council asked Michelangelo if he would complete the project. He locked himself inside his workshop to chisel the stone for three years. When the work was finished, it took forty-nine men five days to bring it to city hall. For six hundred years, people have flocked from around the world to see Michelangelo’s fourteen-foot sculpture we know today simply as David. Unlike with the Captives, the great artist had completed his chiseling and totally freed his masterpiece from stone, just like God had done thirteen centuries before in rehabbing the flesh-and-blood David’s heart. 6

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