Releasing the Angel Within

Legend has it, one time Michelangelo was sculpturing a huge block of marble. While he was working with chisel in hand-just chipping away-a guy walks up and asks, "What are you doing?"


Michelangelo replied, "I'm releasing the angel imprisoned in this block of stone."

A fallen world imprisons the angels within all of us. Encouragement is like sculpting. By encouraging others, we can, like Michelangelo, contribute to releasing the angels within others. 

“Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing” (I Thess. 5:11.)

Working for the Hosts of Heaven

Today is Martin Luther King Day. I consider Dr. King to be one of the most important human beings of the twentieth century.

Within the civil rights movement, Dr. King sought to motivate men and women to offer their very best to God. In that context, King declared, "If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted and Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of Heaven and Earth shall pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.’"

Those words have inspired millions. From the day I encountered that quote, it, too, has motivated me.