Author Kent Crokett asks, "Are you reaching all of your God-given potential?

Michelangelo attempted to carve forty-four statues during his life, but he finished only fourteen. Although we are familiar with some of his work, such as the statue of David, the thirty that he didn't finish are also intriguing. One is a huge chunk of marble from which he sculpted only an elbow. Another shows a leg, thigh, knee, foot, and toes, but the rest of the body is locked inside the marble.

[Kent Crockett graduated from Texas A&M University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and is the senior pastor of the Church of Living Water in Prattville, Alabama. He is the author of The 911 Handbook, Making Today Count for Eternity, and I Once Was Blind but Now I Squint, and has been published in a number of Christian magazines.]

One of my all-time favorite musical plays is Man of La Mancha," says Bruce Larson:

The story's hero is a crazy old man suffering from what we would now call senile psychosis. The action takes place a hundred years past the age of chivalry and there are no knights anymore. But, thinking he is one, Don Quixote puts on a strange suit of armor and rides forth into the world to battle evil and protect the weak and powerless. He brings along his funny little servant Sancho Panza as his squire. When they arrive at a broken-down old inn used by mule traders, Don Quixote calls the innkeeper the lord of a great castle. The innkeeper tells him he is bonkers. In the inn he meets the most miserable human beings imaginable, a pathetic orphan girl who does the most menial chores and is used sexually by every mule trader passing through. He pronounces this wretched girl the great lady, Dulcinea, and he begs for her handkerchief as a token to take into battle. She reacts with fury.

At the end of the play the old man is close to death and no longer suffering from these delusions. In a moving scene, all the people he renamed appear at his bedside and beg him not to change. His excitement about their future has transformed them and they have become the people that this insane visionary saw in them.

My Internet friend Father Brian Cavanaugh tells a funny story about growth. He relates an experience that occurred during seminary days in his book More Sower's Seeds: Second Planting. He and two friends thought to plant a small vegetable garden outside their house of studies. It would consist of tomatoes, squash and cucumbers and the only financial investment required was for them to rent a rake, a pickax and a hoe. The urban environment didn’t allow much space for a garden, but they determined that a small, sunny area of the stone-covered dirt parking lot could work well. However, permission would be needed and they feared that getting the superior’s okay might be no easy task.

The three seminarians explained their idea to him. His response was a tilt of the head a pronouncement. “You’re wasting your time. Nothing will grow there.” But he allowed them to go ahead if that was what they wanted to do.

Reluctant permission is still permission and the three young men began work. First they raked stones and outlined the garden. Then they slammed their pickax into hard dirt, turning clumps of earth upside down. What they discovered just a few inches beneath the surface brought smiles to their faces. It was a gardener’s dream: dark, composted, fertile soil, likely the result of a former refuse area. Still grinning broadly, all three looked at one another and said in unison, “Ah, nothing will grow there!”

The garden, though small, turned out to be spectacular. In fact, tomatoes grew so vigorously they were re-staked twice and finally topped off at seven feet tall. Nothing will grow there indeed!