Marc Estes

I came across this amazing story regarding a priceless instrument that was returned after being misplaced and caught myself reflecting on how this story reminds me how many people have a distorted view of their true value. It is worth the read.

The primary cellist for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra accidentally left a 320-year-old Stradivarius cello outside his home one spring afternoon in 2004. Nearby video surveillance cameras revealed that a bicyclist pilfered the legendary instrument.

At the time it was stolen, the General Kyd, the cello named for the man who brought the instrument to England at the end of the eighteenth century, was valued at nearly $3.5 million, it being one of only sixty cellos handcrafted by Antonio Stradivari in his Cremona, Italy workshop.

About three weeks later, twenty-nine-year-old nurse Melanie Stevens found the instrument lying beside a dumpster about a mile from where it was originally stolen, still inside its silver-coated plastic case. A homeless man helped her load it into her car’s trunk. Stevens asked her boyfriend, who was a cabinetmaker, to convert the old cello into a one-of-a-kind CD rack. “I had the idea to possibly put a hinge on the front,” she said. “He would install little shelves inside, and it would be a very elaborate CD case.”

Stevens didn’t know the significance of the instrument until she saw a news report about it and contacted her attorney, who reported the instrument found. She was rewarded a handsome $50,000, which she donated to charity.

Robert Cauer, a Los Angeles-based instrument restoration specialist who had worked with the General Kyd for some twenty years, reported the valuable instrument was damaged but repairable and would be back in service by the following season. When asked about the prospect that the prized instrument could have been turned into the world’s most expensive CD rack, Cauer said, “It’s so abominable, I get sick when I hear it.”

As an executive pastor of a sizable church, I see a fair share of great people filled with unlimited potential swept from their destiny as they discount their relationship with God. I get sick when I see it; priceless instruments handcrafted for greatness, ignoring their divine purpose. How foolish to neglect the call to greatness in order to fulfill any other purpose.

We cannot place enough value on our importance to God’s symphony. You and I will never know our true potential until and unless we realize how much God loves and cares for us. Only when we understand that the Master Craftsman dotingly created us in His workshop before a single note had been written; when we comprehend that, while He gently sanded and polished us to a golden luster, He knew our considerable value and that someday we would be worth seeking and finding; when we realize that it was only after he applied the bow and tuned our heart strings to perfect pitch that He would stamp His worthy name on us … will we appreciate the warm resonance of His call and surrender to His purpose.

Being chosen by God is part of the Bible’s love story. But it gets even better. God not only chose you, but He wants you to comprehend how important you are to Him. Get used to the idea. Everything was created by God for God, but beyond being created by Him for Him, we have a very special place in His heart above all of creation. “He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures” (James 1:18, MSG). Unfortunately, many of us don’t see the ornate value God has placed on us, and this limits our ability to really use this vital revelation as a primary tool for living life on purpose.