The Real Virtuoso--August 2, 2024

The Real Virtuoso—August 2, 2024

“Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen” [Ephesians 3:20-21]

There are hard and fast limits to what I can accomplish by myself. But there are virtually no limits to what the living God can accomplish through us. A pretty good chunk of the Christian life is learning the humility to accept that first notion, while also nurturing the faith to believe the second.

In a sense, though, it is the truth of so many things in our lives: instruments which have little ability on their own can do extraordinary things in the hands of a master. A piece of copper wire will just sit there on its own impotently, but if you run an electric current through it, energy will flow through the wire that can illuminate a room, power a toaster, or charge your computer. A bow for a violin is just some coarse horse hair strung on a wooden stick, but when it is drawn across a violin by a gifted musician, it can bring forth music that soothes, encourages, or moves us to tears. A brush can’t paint a masterpiece by itself, but in the hands of an artist, it can produce a work of beauty that speaks in ways that words cannot.

Well, to hear the book of Ephesians tell it, we who count ourselves among the people of Jesus are instruments in the hands of the real Virtuoso. By ourselves, we are copper wire, horse hair, and brushes. But in the hands of the One “who by the power at work within us” we are conduits for God to “accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.” There is nothing shameful in that acknowledgement; there is only the humble recognition that we aren’t here to achieve our own little agendas, but rather to be participants in God’s grand magnum opus, a whole new creation.

When we recognize that difference—that we are instruments for God’s creativity, rather than God being a divine power tool for me to use to my own agenda—we begin to understand our lives rightly. Mother Teresa of Calcutta knew that well. As the line attributed to her puts it, “I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God, who is sending a love letter to the world.... He does everything, and sometimes it is really hard because it is a broken pencil and he has to sharpen it a little more.” There are both the humility and the tremendous honor: each of us might be, on our own, broken little pencil stubs. And a pencil, even fresh out of the box, doesn’t have the right words in it—a pencil requires the mind of a writer who pulls the sharpened lead across the page to craft a novel or create a poem or write a letter that says to a Beloved, “You are mine.” In the hands of the right author, a little broken pencil can be the most powerful thing in the world. And here, Teresa would tell us, like an earlier love letter to the Ephesians puts it, is the place our whole lives as Christians take place: we live out our days in the hands of a God who is writing a love letter, painting a masterpiece, and composing a symphony that will electrify and illuminate the whole universe.

Taking this seriously, of course, will come at the cost of our old personal agendas. We don’t come to God with our little laundry-lists of private blessings we want or selfish favors, and we don’t get to use God like a tool, or wield prayer as a magic formula to get what we want. We come, surrendering our own myopic visions (“I want to make more money so I can have a bigger house…” or “I want my political party to win, so I’ll tell myself that MY party has the backing of GOD!” or “God’s will is for interest rates to go down so I can finally buy that boat that will make me the envy of my neighbors!”), in order to be useful as instruments and tools in the hand of God. We let go of our old assumptions and agendas in order to be a part of how God the Master Artist creates something beautiful that was beyond our capacity to conceive of. We open our hands and let go of our scripts for “The Way Life Is Supposed To Go” in order to be surprised at the glorious key change in the finale of God’s symphony—and even more astounded that God has used us to add color to the harmonies with our meager notes from the back of the orchestra.

This is the kind of life we have been drawn into as the people of Jesus. And we can only imagine where it will take us next…

Lord Jesus, work through us in ways beyond what we could even dream of, using us as we are to be a part of your beautiful handiwork.