The Colors We Forgot Were There

For nearly five centuries, the world believed Michelangelo painted in muted, somber tones. The Sistine Chapel ceiling, blackened by centuries of candle soot, animal glue from previous repair attempts, and layers of grime, presented a dark and shadowy masterpiece. Scholars wrote essays about the artist's restrained palette. It was simply who Michelangelo was, they said.

Then, in 1980, a team of restorers began the painstaking work of cleaning the ceiling. What emerged stunned the art world. Beneath all that accumulated darkness lay colors of breathtaking brilliance — vivid pinks, electric greens, luminous oranges. The robes of the prophets practically sang. The real Michelangelo had been there all along, buried under what the years had deposited.

Some critics actually protested. They had grown so comfortable with the diminished version that the original felt wrong to them.

This is what sin and shame do to a human soul. Layer after layer settles over us — guilt, regret, the residue of wounds given and received — until we and everyone around us assume that the muted version is the real one. We forget the brilliance God originally painted into us.

But restoration is God's specialty. He does not repaint us as something new. He carefully, lovingly removes what does not belong, revealing what was always there — the image of the living God, vibrant and luminous, waiting beneath the soot of a broken world.