USGN Article  - August 2004
Written by Barbi Franklin

A Crushing Moment

This past weekend I suffered a great loss – one that only losing my dear loved ones could rival.

Saturday night, as we checked into a suburban Atlanta hotel, my violin, made in Italy in 1911, was run over by our trailer and crushed.  This violin, worth thousands of dollars, was an inheritance gift from my mom and dad when I was just a teenager (30 years ago).  For seven generations (that we can trace), preaching, singing, and ministering with stringed instruments have been a family legacy!

What a shock to open the violin case and find the top of the violin in splinters, the finger board and neck broken, and the sound post sticking up through broken pieces.   I was stunned and speechless.  An irreplaceable treasure was swept out of my life in a short moment of time… a simple but devastating.

Sickened, as I picked through the pieces, carefully slipping loose splinters into a little bag, I knew that God had orchestrated this event – nothing comes into our lives without going through the loving hands of our God.  It was His will, just as it is His will to trim even the fruitful vines so that we will bear more fruit.  It doesn’t look right until we are willing to see that HE orchestrates the crushing of even good things in our lives…

I held my violin case tight to my side, like a baby, as we arrived at the church the next morning, feeling protective over the broken splinters of a once, beautiful instrument.  In the church lobby a women approached me before the service and said that she had been inspired by my family, the Murk Family, to play violin over 30 years ago.  The dam broke… I finally wept, telling her what happened!

She had been so inspired by my family; so taken with Barbi “Murk’s” violin playing, that SHE wanted to play.  Her father lovingly bought a fine German instrument from a violinist that played for the St. Louis Philharmonic orchestra.  Amazingly, she ended up lending me her German violin until I am able to replace my own with something comparable. GOD HAD ORCHESTRATED ALL OF THIS!!

What are the chances of this happening?!  Coincidence?  No, nothing comes through God’s hand that isn’t meant for our good! And nothing happens to YOU that isn’t meant for some good in your life.  God will provide a miracle.  We know that God always has a perfect plan for our best… because He’s a loving father!

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