Inner Stradivarius

In the spring of 2006, a 1707 Stradivarius violin called “The Hammer” sold at public auction for a record $3.5 million. If such a gift were given to you, can you imagine using it as a pickleball paddle or as an oar for a canoe. Of course not. You would protect it. You would guard it.

And yet something far more priceless than a Stradivarius violin has been entrusted to every follower of Christ. We have been given the gift of God’s indwelling presence. The Greater One lives in us. In 1 Corinthians 6:19 Paul asks the question, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” So let’s reflect on this revelation. Can anything be of greater value than the Creator of all choosing to dwell within us?

As Quaker author Thomas Kelly intones, “Deep within us…there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking voice, to which we may continuously return…”

But just as a violin uses strings to produce sounds that inspire the spirit, so we use the “strings” of God awareness, attentiveness and alignment in order to  gaze daily on the glory of our inner Stradivarius, the Presence of God within.

So let’s join with the seventeenth century French monk, and “spiritual conductor of the soul,” Brother Lawrence in cultivating what his classic book calls The Practice of the Presence of God. Start small and don’t get discouraged,  but try to build regular routines of listening to God into your life. Like the guy lost in New York traffic asks the bystander, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” And his response: “Practice, practice, practice.”