The Ceiling He Almost Quit

In 1508, Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo protested. He considered himself a sculptor, not a painter. He believed the project was a setup by his rivals to watch him fail. He wrote to a friend that he was "not in the right place" and that painting was "not my profession."

But he began anyway. For four years, he worked on scaffolding sixty feet above the chapel floor, paint dripping into his eyes, his neck locked in agony from looking upward for hours. His body became so contorted that he could only read letters by holding them above his head. He wrote a poem describing his misery — his stomach pushed toward his chin, his brush splattering his face "making a rich pavement of it."

Midway through, mold destroyed months of work. He had to scrape the plaster off and start entire sections over.

Yet he kept going. Nine thousand square feet of ceiling. Over three hundred figures. What emerged was not merely a painting but a theological vision so breathtaking that people wept when they first saw it.

Most of the masterpieces God is painting in our lives feel, in the middle, like nothing but strain and failure. We cannot see the ceiling from the scaffolding. But the Almighty who began a good work in you is not finished yet. He does not abandon His canvas. Neither should you abandon your trust in the Artist.