Discarded Wood in a Nasty Harbor

This is a story that was told by Joseph Stowell during a Chapel service while I was a senior at Cedarville University. It might also be found in his book, Loving Christ.

During one vacation Dr. Stowell had the chance to talk with his nephew’s girlfriend who was studying violin at the Cleveland Conservatory of Music. Eventually they came to the topic of Stradivarius violins.

“Isn’t it an amazing thing that Antonio Stradivari in the 1600s would be able to build a violin that has never been duplicated that would be the world’s greatest music treasure if you played the violin. Why is it that his violins are so uniquely beautiful?”

She said, “There have been many theories through the years. At one time they thought it was the varnish, but that has been discounted. Actually they’ve taken pieces of broken Stradivarius violins apart and analyzed the wood. They found that the wood that he used, that the cells of the wood are hollow, so that the wood is like thousands of organ chambers resonating with the sound in these hollow cells.”

I asked, “How did that happen?”

She said, “Anonio Stradivari was not a wealthy man. Like other violin makers he was not able to buy expensive wood to make violins, so he would often go down to the harbor and take wood out of the harbor; broken oars, the sides of broken ships, boxes that were floating. She said, in those days, and you know this if you’ve studied history, these harbors were horribly polluted. The sludge and filth of the sewers and the waste of the city would end up in the harbor. The filth and the pollution and the sludge around this wood and the microbes would get into the wood and eat the cells hollow. He would take this wood out of the sludge of the harbor and make it into a beautiful violin.”

I said, “That’s what Christ did for me! And my life, lost in the sludge and pollution of sin, eating me to be hollow. And then Christ came and took me out and rescued me and made me into what I am and fills that hollowness with the beauty of himself. That is the most beautiful picture of redemption I’ve heard in my life! And he has done that for you. And when you know that, you can’t help but love him.”