Not long ago, I was asked to speak at a church and just before I brought the message the worship team led us in a song that featured a violin. Later, I learned that violin was being played by a girl named Mariana, who was one of the top young violinists in Romania.

As Mariana played I sensed God drawing my attention to the instrument and saying, “I have something to say to you and to the church through this violin.”  So, as I sat there, totally moved by the soaring, emotive melody God spoke two things to me :

1) Just like in nature, everything that appears to have died, comes back again in other life-giving forms.

That violin was a miracle.  Once, it was a piece of dead wood.

Now in the hands of Mariana, it became a singing tree!

In 1 Corinthians 15:46, scripture says that “first comes the natural, then the spiritual.”  One of the best ways to understand what’s going on in our invisible, spiritual world is to notice what’s happening in front of us in the material one.

It helps if we understand that the first bible people read was not etched in stone or scratched on parchment. The first “Word” God  spoke to his people came through creation. When God created the Heavens and the Earth he incarnated himself there. And through all forms of creation God still invites us to experience him and participate with him every day.

So, here I was staring at a piece of fallen tree that someone had carefully crafted and repurposed into a violin.  Mariana’s violin was the resurrected form of that tree and now it was literally singing a resurrection song. Even the strings of the bow Mariana was using had something to teach us that day. They were made from goat gut.  A goat had died and it too had been resurrected to another life.

God was saying that this bow and violin were beautiful pictures of what God plans for all the tragedies, losses, deaths and failures of our lives.

Whatever you think you have been dead to… or that you’ve died in…God promises that out of His love, He’s going to make something new and alive out of that dead thing. It may not look anything like the original material but something good and useful and life-giving is destined to come from it, if we are willing.

Then I sensed God saying:

2) I reform the dead things, breathe new life into them, so they can be My instruments in the world.

God was inviting us to see that this once dead, now repurposed instrument of ours is intended to offer up a bold new tune. It may not be a tune we planned to play. It may not be a familiar tune. But somewhere there is a little audience that awaits the music only we have to bring through it.

This has certainly been the story of me and my wife, Caron. Our former life is no more but everyday we see great, renewal evidence in the powerful life and work we now share that could not have come to us any other way.

So, what is the new music God is gifting you to play

from the once discarded pieces of your life?

Some of us are violins or a guitars. Some of us are like keyboards or drums; and some are mellow cellos. What is your sound?

All things will die. Some naturally, some painfully. But, in Christ, everything takes on some form of new life. And like Mariana’s violin, our once dead, failed, unusable parts are offered a lovely, new song to sing.  

*Take stock of what has died in your life.

* Offer the remnants of the “death” to God for His Repurposing

*Make a list of the good things that might not be happening now if this one thing had not happened. 

*Join the sound of your new music to the most astounding, constantly renewing, hope-filled orchestra the world has ever heard.

Isaiah 61:2-3  God sent me to announce the year of his grace  and to comfort all who mourn,  to care for the needs of all who mourn… to give them bouquets of roses instead of ashes, messages of joy instead of news of doom, a praising heart instead of a languid spirit. Rename them “Oaks of Righteousness” planted by God to display his glory.

What challenging circumstance is God repurposing in YOUR life? Tell us about it by clicking below on the comment or email button.

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