The Sculptor Who Was Called to Paint

When Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in 1508, the artist protested. He was a sculptor, not a painter. He suspected his rivals had suggested the project hoping he would fail. Marble was his language — he once said he could see the figure trapped inside the stone and simply carved away everything that was not the statue. A ceiling covered in wet plaster was someone else's calling.

But for four years, Michelangelo lay on scaffolding, neck bent backward, paint dripping into his eyes, his body aching so badly that he wrote a poem complaining he had been "bent like a bow." He worked in isolation, dismissing his assistants, convinced he was laboring outside his gifts.

And yet those nine panels from Genesis — from the sweeping arm of God dividing light from darkness to the outstretched fingers of The Creation of Adam — became one of the most magnificent achievements in the history of human expression. The sculptor's reluctant obedience produced the painter's masterpiece.

Sometimes the Almighty calls us to a purpose that does not match our résumé. We resist because the assignment does not fit the identity we have built for ourselves. But God is not limited by our self-perception. He sees capacities in us that we have not yet discovered. The calling that feels most unlikely may be the very one for which we were made.