Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

The reading for today titled The Masterpiece Within was written by Kenneth Peterson.

Writing in the Atlantic, author Arthur C. Brooks tells of his visit to the National Palace Museum

in Taiwan, which contains one of the largest collections of Chinese art in the world.

The museum guide asked, what do you think of when I ask you to imagine a work of art yet to be

started? Brooks said, an empty canvas, I guess.

The guide replied, there's another way to view it.

The art already exists, and the job of artists is simply to reveal it.

In Ephesians 2.10, the word handiwork, sometimes translated as workmanship or masterpiece, is from the Greek word

poema from which we derive our word poetry. God has created us as works of art, living poems.

However, our art has become obscured. Ephesians 2, verse 1, reads,

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.

To paraphrase the words of the museum guide,

the art of us is already there,

and it's the job of the divine artist to reveal it.

Indeed, God is restoring us, his masterpieces.

God who is rich in mercy made us alive. As we go through challenges and difficulties, we might take comfort in knowing that the divine artist is at work.

Philippians 2.13 tells us,

it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his great purpose.

Know that God is working in you to reveal his masterpiece.

Today's Our Daily Bread Devotional Scripture reading is from Ephesians

2, verses 1 through 10.

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