Hidden in Plain Sight

They thought it was just a decoration.

It was a small marble sculpture perched on top of the family piano in central France. For decades, the sculpture sat among framed family photos -- a piece of stone with sentimental value.

The family assumed it was a replica, a copy of something more significant. But when auctioneer Aymeric Rouillac saw it, something caught his eye. The contours of the spine, the tension in the muscles, and the posture of despair all looked a little too perfect. So he decided to investigate.

And what he discovered stunned the art world.

The sculpture -- Le Désespoir -- was created by French sculptor Auguste Rodin in the early 1890s and had disappeared from public view some 120 years ago. Measuring less than a foot in height, it was once intended to be part of Rodin’s monumental work The Gates of Hell, a sprawling portal filled with more than 200 expressive figures now housed in various locations from Philadelphia and Paris to Tokyo and Zurich.

When experts from the Comité Rodin examined the sculpture, they confirmed its authenticity immediately. This was the real thing: not a copy, not a fake, but a priceless original. And last month, the sculpture sold at auction for nearly $1 million.

The once-forgotten statue had never lost its value. It had simply been hidden in plain sight.

How many times do we dismiss the treasures God has placed around us -- or within us -- as ordinary? We look in the mirror and see only what’s common, unaware of the Spirit-breathed masterpiece we were created to be. We place others in boxes, assuming we already know their worth, forgetting that they, too, bear the image of the Creator.

The Apostle Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians 4:7: But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

Your life may not feel like a masterpiece, and some days, you may feel like just another figure on the shelf. But God knows the truth of what you carry, even when others cannot see it. There is treasure inside of you -- holy and redemptive.

As theologian Frederick Buechner once wrote: The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

You are not a copy. You are not forgotten. You are God’s own creation -- carved with care, held with love, and offered to the world with purpose.