Gifts of Music

In Proverbs 16, we see some verses that point to God's insight and His desire to work through our lives.  Verse 3 says:
3 Commit your works to the Lord, And your thoughts will be established.

If we desire to be obedient, we can depend on the Lord to lead us according to His will.  The theme of God's direction is also see in verse 9 of the same chapter:

9 A man's heart plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps.

So, if we have a heart that is established on the Lord, if we are allowing Him to guide us in our thoughts, we will see His plan manifested through us.  He is the One Who inspires ideas, who illuminates our understanding as we devote ourselves to careful study of the Bible, and on Whom we can depend to direct our steps.  As He directs us, we can also depend on Him to equip us to be able to do what He has called.

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In Psalm 37, we can see a passage that can bring assurance to us as we seek to follow in God's ways:
5 Commit your way to the Lord, Trust also in Him, And He shall bring it to pass.
6 He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, And your justice as the noonday.
7 Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him; Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, Because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass.

Over 35 years ago, a preacher and homesteader in Arkansas named Ed Stilley had reached a low point in his life.  He believed there was "no way out" of what he was experiencing.  He put a gun in his lap - and fell asleep.  The story is told on the Hyperallergic website.

Stilley woke up and put the gun away.  The reason?  The story says that, "He claims God then spoke to him in a dream, promising to 'take care of the matter' as long as Stilley obeyed a strange command: make guitars and give them away to children for free."

Interestingly enough, Stilley had no training or the supplies needed for to build instruments. No problem - he started what became a practice spanning 30 years of making guitars, ukuleles, violins, and dulcimers from scrap wood and found objects. The story says that on most of them, he carved the words, “True Faith True Light Have Faith in God." He gave them away free of charge. And, he had been released from his season of spiritual despair.

Photographer Tim Hawley, who has put together a book called, Gifted: The Instruments of Ed Stilley, says that each of the instruments, 40 of which are pictured in the book, are "a piece of interactive art that is a cross between a banjo, an old barn, and a well-worn bible." Each instrument takes about 100 hours to make, and they apparently produce a unique sound.

The story says about Stilley, whose father left his family during the Great Depression, when he was six:

The resourcefulness Stilley was forced to learn shines in his cobbled-together guitars. In X-rays of these instruments, Hawley reveals their intricate inner workings: internal reverb systems made from screen door springs; pot lids and valve springs attached to metal truss rods, making for wild, oscillating tonalities. Stilley made the instruments from thick slabs of hard wood not usually used for string instruments and sawed them into strange, jagged shapes like butterfly wings and lopsided trapezoids.

Well, what another amazing story - and it presents some great lessons for us to ponder.  First of all, one of the common themes on which I like to concentrate: use your talents for the glory of God. Out of the pit of despair, he believed he had a call from the Most High, and Ed Stilley responded in this creative way.

And, this tells us something about giftedness:  it's not always apparent.  Sometimes it's revealed through obedience.  Ed didn't have the training to know how to make guitars - but I believe the old saying that what God appoints, He anoints.  As 1st Thessalonians 5 reminds us, God is faithful to call and to fulfill.   Moses claimed he did not have the ability to be used of God - God had other ideas.  In our humanity, perhaps we say that we can't, but God is saying that indeed we can.

Also, we hear stories of God meeting people at the end of the rope, when their lives have hit rock bottom.  I think that God will allow our lives to be consumed by negative circumstances or consequences in order to meet us there and display His faithfulness.  When we are wallowing in the disappointment of self-reliance, it is there where we can best see the power of God - we have nowhere else to turn.

Finally, Ed Stilley believes that he heard from God.  We can believe that God is still speaking to us today.   He speaks through His Word, and there is an effort called, "God Speaking," underway now that challenges Christians to spend an hour a day listening to God's Word.   We can also be reliant on the Spirit of God as He directs our paths.  He will definitely speak to us specifically through the Scirptures, He will speak into our spirits, He may speak through the mouths of other people, and there may be other ways, such as a dream, in which He expresses His direction to us.