Renewed Day by Day

In downtown Fort Lauderdale, there is a sculpture called “Thrive.” It’s impossible to miss. A towering female figure stands before you, split open, cracked, incomplete. She looks broken. Wounded. As if something has gone wrong. But when you look closer, inside the open space of her chest, there’s life, greenery, light, hope. What appears broken on the outside is the very place where life is flourishing.

St. Paul says something very similar in his second letter to the Corinthians: “So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). He is being realistic. Our outer nature does weaken. Bodies age. Strength fades. Life leaves marks on us. There are losses we carry, scars we don’t talk about, limitations we didn’t expect.

But he doesn’t stop there. In the very same breath, he declares something filled with hope: the inner nature is being renewed day by day. That’s God’s pattern. He doesn’t wait for the outside to look perfect before He starts working on the inside. Often, it’s precisely when the outer shell cracks that the inner life begins to grow.

Think about the people whose faith and life you admire most. Usually, they’re not the ones who had the smoothest path or the easiest story. They’re the ones who have been weathered by life but softened by grace. Their outer nature has known wear, but their inner nature has learned trust. They carry peace, not because life was gentle, but because God was faithful.

Some of you may feel tired in your body. You may feel limited by age, illness, or circumstances you didn’t choose. You may look at yourself and think, “I’m not what I used to be.” And that may be true on the outside. But remember this: even when the outer self weakens, the inner life can flourish. Even when the shell breaks, the soul can thrive.

Don’t lose heart. Don’t judge your life by what you see on the surface. Keep believing. Every prayer you whisper, every moment you choose to trust, every time you hold on to hope instead of despair, something beautiful is growing within you. God is doing some of His best work where only He can see it.