His workmanship
The work in progress
In an artist's studio, on a long bench scattered with tools, a piece sits clearly unfinished. One side is shaped and gleaming; the other is still rough, the marks of the work raw and exposed. A stranger glancing in might think it abandoned, a botched thing left to gather dust. But the tools are warm and worn to the hand, the light is angled just so, and everything about the room says this is no reject. It is a work in progress, watched over by a maker who knows exactly what it will become. Paul tells the battered believer to look in that studio and see themselves. We are His workmanship, he writes, using a word that sits close to our word for a poem or a masterpiece, created in Christ for good works God prepared for us long before. And to anyone certain they are too far gone to turn out well, he adds the promise that steadies everything: the One who began this good work in you will carry it through to completion. The rough side is not the verdict. It is the part not finished yet.
“We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before that we would walk in them.”
— Paul, to the Ephesians — Ephesians 2:10 (WEB)
“being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.”
Reconnect rests on this: you are not the storm's leftover wreckage but God's handiwork, unfinished and certain to be completed. Paul names you a masterpiece in progress, created for good works, and promises that the One who began the work will finish it. This phase re-roots you in the patience of the Artist, who keeps a half-shaped piece on the bench because He knows what it will become.
After the upheaval you may catch sight of yourself and see only wreckage, a project so marred you assume God set it down and walked away. Scripture says the opposite, and says it as settled fact: you are His handiwork, a word that brushes up against masterpiece, created in Christ for good works already laid out for you to walk in. You are not the studio's failure; you are its work in progress. And here is the promise made for exactly your fear: the One who began the good work in you will see it through to the end. Hold the difference firmly, because everything rests on it. Unfinished is not the same as abandoned. The rough, raw side of you is only the part not finished yet.
The rough, raw side of you, the part still bearing the marks of the work, is not proof you were discarded; it is proof the Maker is not done. You are on the bench, under the light, in the hands of an Artist who finishes what He starts. Not wreckage left behind. A masterpiece still being made.
The Church can treat struggling people as damaged goods to be quietly written off, as though some were too far gone to turn out well. Scripture calls every believer God's workmanship, His handiwork, created in Christ for good works, certain to be completed by the God who began the work. Across history the Body has been faithful where it saw its people as unfinished masterpieces rather than rejects, and trusted God to finish what He started in them. The whole Church is itself a work in progress, half-shaped and still on the bench, watched over by an Artist who does not abandon what He has begun. No one in the Body of Christ is left half-made and walked away from.
Your sense of being ruined will rise and fall with the day. What cannot be shaken is the promise underneath it: He who began a good work in you will complete it. The piece on the bench is not at the mercy of its own rough patches; it is held by the steadiness of the Maker, whose hands do not quit before the work is done.
- Where have I read the unfinished, rough parts of myself as proof I was abandoned?
- What changes when I hold that unfinished and abandoned are not the same thing?
- Do I actually trust that the One who began the work in me intends to complete it?
Lord, I look at the rough, unfinished side of myself and call it wreckage, as if You had set me down and walked away. Yet You call me Your handiwork, created in Christ for good works, and You promise to complete the work You began. Help me hold the difference: I am not abandoned, only unfinished. Keep me on Your bench, under Your patient hand, until You are done. Amen.