Always Give Your Best

‘...do your work willingly...’ Colossians 3:23 CEV

One of Michelangelo’s greatest masterpieces was his sculpture of David. He worked on it with such passion that he often slept in his clothes, resenting the time it took to take them off and put them on again. He repeatedly examined and measured the marble to see what pose it could accommodate. He made hundreds of sketches of possible attitudes, and detailed drawings from models. He tested his ideas in wax on a small scale, and only when he was satisfied did he pick up his chisel and mallet. He approached the painting of the Sistine Chapel with the same intensity. Lying at uncomfortable angles on hard boards, breathing the suffocating air just under the vault, he suffered from inflamed eyes and skin irritation from the plaster dust. For the next four years he literally sweated in physical distress; but look at what he produced! Dr Martin Luther King Jr said, ‘If a man is called to be a street sweeper he should sweep streets as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of Heaven and Earth will pause and say, “Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”‘ If you’re not passionate about what you do, find something you can be passionate about! Don’t just strive to make money, strive to make a difference. Significance should be your goal, not survival. Paul gives us the ultimate reason for always giving our best: ‘…do your work willingly as though you were serving the Lord Himself…’ (Colossians 3:23 CEV)