The Luthier

Praise him, sun and moon,
praise him, all you shining stars! — Psalms 148:3

Imagine, if you will, a craftsman, a violin maker, desiring to create an instrument whose sound could express all the inner mysteries of the heart. Having spent years apprenticed to a master craftsman, he now has the opportunity to build his own instruments and put into practice, not only all the skills he learned from his mentor, but also the ideas flowing from his own gifted genius.

While he conceives the finished instrument and can hear it's wonderful tone within his own imagination, he knows it will be long months before he will hold a finished labor of love that matches his vision. He must first prepare forms, select the perfect, properly aged hardwoods and pine, put sketches of his ideas to paper, and ready all his tools to facilitate the creation.

After long days and even longer months the instrument he so lovingly crafted is finally complete, and now has arrived the moment wherein the violin is strung for the first time and lifted to be tentatively tuned and sounded. While he is not a virtuoso violinist, he can play competently enough, and his excitement builds as he stresses the instrument, listening to the mellow timber of its low notes and the sweet, crystalline high notes imparting their own character to the piece his hand has chosen to play on its maiden voyage.

Pouring out from his heart, down through his arm, radiating out through the fingers of his one hand and bow in the other, onto the fingerboard of the instrument and out through its body flows the symphony of his soul. He can hardly contain his excitement as he visualizes his unique instrument in the hands of a true master, and imagines the sound he will be capable of coaxing the instrument to produce.

Read again the verse at the top of the page. Did you ever wonder, how in the world do the sun and moon and all the shining stars praise God? I considered that for some time and finally came to the realization that everything God created praises Him, in that each effortlessly fulfils the task for which it was designed. Every creation, that is, except man. Every one of us is, at best, a broken instrument, unable to glorify God as He intended.

The solution is not a matter of restringing our violin; we need an entirely new instrument; one which God creates when we are born anew. Realizing we are not our own, but have been bought with a priceless price, He remakes us as instruments of His choosing. 

As of this writing, the most expensive Stradivarius at auction sold for a bid of $16 million, but that is nothing when compared to the cost of our redemption. The Father asked me recently, "How much gold would you have Me make so you might pay for Christ's redemption?" There is nothing we can give in exchange for our lives, since all that we have comes from His hand. For thus says the Lord: “You were sold for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money" (Isaiah 52:3).

Yet, if we will surrender what we do have, He will craft from our lives such an instrument as the world has never heard, one so winsome it will be as though heaven itself opened up and poured out the music of the universe. But, it will be His Spirit poured out through your yielded heart strings into a dying world, finding its seat in the great symphony of life in Christ Jesus.

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

                                                        ― Francis of Assisi