Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your sons will be like olive shoots around your table.  Psalm 128:3

 

Richard Steel, a first‑year music student at a London college, was standing on the corner waiting for a bus when tragedy struck.  A barrier blocked the path of the bus, so being a helpful lad, Steel put down his violin and books and moved the barrier.  The bus driver, not knowing that Steel’s hand‑carry were behind him, put the bus in reverse and backed over them.

The violin, which had been bought by his parents at a secondhand sale ten years before, was crushed but not as crushed as Richard Steel.  The Associated Press put it in these words:  “News reports said that in the pile of splinters that remained, Steel saw for the first time a Latin inscription that said the violin had been made by the Italian violin‑maker Antonio Stradivarius in 1715.  ‘I didn’t know what had hit me,’ Steel said.  ‘I was completely dumbfounded.  I saw the funny side of it later but not at the time.  I knew it was an old violin, but I didn’t suspect it was a Strad,’ he said.  ‘The inscription was actually inside the violin and could not be seen unless you took the instrument to pieces.  The bus certainly did that.'”

What was the true worth of the violin?  A spokesman for the auctioneers, Sotheby’s in London, said that “a genuine Stradivarius would bring at least $720,000.”  What an irony!  In his possession was one of the finest instruments ever made but he didn’t know it until tragedy struck!

At times members of our families are like the old Stradivarius!  We appreciate them after a fashion, but don’t understand their true value and worth until tragedy strikes.

Ann Wells learned that lesson.  She wrote an article which appeared in a local paper.  Let me quote it:  “My brother‑in‑law opened the bottom drawer of my sister’s bureau and lifted out a tissue‑wrapped package.  ‘This,’ he said, ‘is not a slip.  This is lingerie.’  He discarded the tissue and handed me the slip.  It was exquisite; silk, handmade and trimmed with a cobweb of lace.  The price tag with an astronomical figure on it was still attached.  Jan bought this … at least eight or nine years ago.  She never wore it.  She was saving it for a special occasion.  Well, I guess this is the occasion.

“He took the slip from me and put it on the bed with the other clothes we were taking to the mortician.  His hands lingered on the soft material for a moment, then he slammed the drawer shut and turned to me.  ‘Don’t ever save anything for a special occasion.  Every day you are alive is a special occasion.'”

Then Ann Wells wrote, “I’m still thinking about his words, and they’ve changed my life… I’m not “saving” anything; we use our good china and crystal for every special event…  ‘someday’ and ‘one of these days’ are losing their grip on my vocabulary.  If it’s worth seeing or hearing or doing, I want to see and hear and do it now.”

If those two stories, which are true, don’t motivate you, you need a resurrection instead of a revival.  If it is important, say it now.  If you care, express those feelings.  If you know you should ask forgiveness, do it while someone can say, “Yes, I forgive you.”  The Stradivarius violin is important‑‑not because of the words stamped inside‑‑but because it came from the hand of the master and is a priceless instrument.  Take a lingering look, friend, God may have given you a Stradivarius and you foolishly mistook it for a worthless violin bought at a second-hand store.

Resource reading: Proverbs 31