Joe Stowell tells a story on one of his online daily devotionals about the uniqueness of Stradivarius violins. He indicates that Stradivarius lived in a small Italian village in the 1700s. “Since he was too poor to buy fine wood for his violins, he pulled his wood from the polluted harbor of his village. Three hundred years ago, the harbors were the equivalent of our town dumps. They were a smelly, dismal stew of trash, human and animal waste and garbage.

As experts analyze the wood from these famous violins, they discover that microbes in the contaminated water had eaten away the inside of the cells in the wood. The only thing left of the cells was the superstructure. So, when a violinist plays a Stradivarius violin, it’s like an organ with thousands of sound chambers, each reverberating the sound of the bow moving across the strings.”

What an incredible illustration of just what Christ has done for each of His redeemed kids. We too were are valueless, lost and without significance until the glorious message of the gospel gripped our hearts and we turned our full face toward the savior! The Bible says, “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8)”.

The Lord quite literally took very poor raw material and crafted something that He was willing to die for- us!

That kind of delight in something of poor quality made me think of my favorite verse in Zephaniah (3:17): “The Lord your God is with you, the mighty warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in His love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”

The mental picture is this…the almighty, eternal God of the universe cares enough to craft my life out of sewer material and then stands over me and sings as He makes music with the scarred instrument.
Now there is a thought to start the week with! Praise His name!

By His Grace and for His Glory,
Sherry L. Worel