LIVING AS APPRENTICES

 * The Vieuxtemps Guarneri is a violin that is 273 years old. It recently became the most expensive violin in the world, selling for an estimated $16 million. Its previous owner had kept the violin under his bed for five decades. Its new owner anonymously donated the historic instrument to violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, on loan for the rest of her life.

Meyers describe her love affair with this violin and the “extraordinary gamut of colors” that it can produce on Morning Edition (NPR). She then played a bit of Vivaldi’s Spring from The Four Seasons to demonstrate.  I have to agree with her assessment.  I have never heard the “birds chirping” in this piece quite so beautifully.

As I listened to Meyers describe the relationship of a finely-tuned and beautifully crafted violin to the artist who plays it, I thought about how a finely-tuned and beautifully crafted life can be an instrument in the hand of his or her Creator.  Perhaps the season of Lent can be a time to tune up and craft our instrument so we can play God’s love to the rest of the world even more beautifully.

*I  was driving to work the other day on icy ruts filled with unexpected pot holes, when a school bus approached me with its yellow lights flashing.  I sped up (of course) until I saw that the pavement was polka-dotted with pot holes, so I slowed and stopped down just as the bus’s red lights turned on.  Nothing happened for 30 seconds. Then I saw an adorable kindergarten girl in a red coat running across the street from a driveway blockaded by snow piles and waving at the bus driver.  I looked at the driver and saw that she was holding up a paddle decorated with a huge smile.  That smile made it safe for the girl to venture out into the street.  The scene made even me smile. As I continued on my way, it occurred to me that if we can see  a smiling God in our soul’s eye every time we get ready to step out in life, everything thing would seem much less risky!

Note:  To hear Ann Akiko Meyers playing Spring, Google Morning Edition, scroll down to The Soul of the World’s Most Expensive Violin and click on Listen.