Hanging in There!

Have you ever started a project and discovered that you really didn’t want to finish it? Perhaps it was boring and couldn’t hold your interest, or maybe it seemed too difficult.  If so, you’re not alone. But before you give up, here's a a few people who decided to hang in there:

While painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo grumbled that he was a sculptor – not a painter, that he’d grown a goiter from the torture, and that his face had become “a fine floor for droppings”.  And he wasn’t even sure he would be paid for the job! Still, he did not give up. A little over four years later he completed the project that the entire world calls a ‘masterpiece’.

Gutzon Borglum, also a sculptor, and his son were hired to build a “Shrine of Democracy” by carving four faces into a granite mountain in South Dakota. This project took 14 years to complete, but today millions of people visit Mount Rushmore to see the 60 foot faces of four presidents representing the first 130 years of American history.

 

While he lay dying on a battlefield in France during WWII, Felix Lucero made a promise to devote the rest of his life to creating Christian art.  After returning to America, Lucero was homeless and living under a bridge across the Santa Cruz River when he kept his promise and began a project he worked on for the last 13 years of his life. The Garden of Gethsemane is nestled in a grove of majestic mesquites along the riverbank and remains one of the most tranquil tourist spots in town.

Still thinking about giving up? Nah, me neither.

Hang in There!