"Touch of the Master’s Hand"





By Myra Welsh

T’was battered and scarred, and the auctioneer
Thought it scarcely worth his while
To waste much time on the old violin,
But held it up with a smile.

"What am I bidden, good folks," he cried,
"Who’ll start the bidding for me?"
"A dollar, a dollar," then, two! Only two?
"Two dollars, and who’ll make it three?

"Three dollars, once; three dollars, twice;
Going for three . . . "But no,
From the room, far back, a grey haired man
Came forward and picked up the bow;

Then, wiping the dust from the old violin,
And tightening the loose strings,
He played a melody pure and sweet
As a caroling angel sings.

The music ceased, and the auctioneer,
With a voice that was quiet and low,
Said: "What am I bid for the old violin?"
And he held it up with the bow.

"A thousand dollars, and who’ll make it two?
Two thousand! And who’ll make it three?
Three thousand, once; three thousand, twice;
And going and gone," said he.

The people cheered, but some of them cried,
"We do not quite understand
What changed its worth?" Swift came the reply:
"The touch of a master’s hand."

And many a man with life out of tune,
And battered and scarred with sin,
Is auctioned cheap to the thoughtless crowd,
Much like the old violin.

A "mess of potage," a glass of wine;
A game, and he travels on.
He is "going" once, and "going" twice,
He’s "going" and almost "gone."

But the Master comes and the foolish crowd
Never can quite understand
The worth of a soul and the change that’s wrought
By the touch of the Master’s hand.

Image found at:

http://www.sugardoodle.net/sdclipart/?category_name=jesus-christ&paged=4

Repentance and Change

Because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we have the opportunity to repent.  Repentance is more than cleansing us from sin.  We all can repent.  If we exercise faith in Christ and repent, we can be free form feelings of guilt and shame caused by sin.  I really like what Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the quorum of the Twelve Apostles said:

Worth of a Soul

"Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God;"(Doctrine and Covenants 18: 10).  How great we may ask?  It is so great that He gave His life for all of us.  "For, behold, the Lord your Redeemer suffered death in the flesh; wherefore he suffered the pain of all men, that all men might repent and come unto him.  And he hath risen again from the dead, that he might bring all men unto him, on conditions of repentance.  And how great is his joy in the soul that repenteth!"(Doctrine and Covenants 18: 11-13).

"RISE ABOVE THE BLUES"

Change can be difficult.  I have had a lot of experiences on my mission that have really made me change.  It is interesting to be able to look back on my life and see how things were placed in front of me to remind me who I am.  Every experience we go through is for a reason.  Our whole mortal life is for a reason.  Our purpose is to find out who we are, and change to become what we were meant to become!

The Enemy Inside Of Us

There is a destructive force very active in the world.  One that is the cause of so much heartache, chaos, and fear.  It is a force that we all have to deal with daily.  Found at its very core is the devil.  The force is anger!  The Savior put it best when He said, "For verily, verily I say unto you, he that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another."(3 Nephi 11: 29)  So if it is so prevalent and powerful, how can we overcome?

How Do We Avoid Sin?

Nehemiah, in the Old Testimate, started a large task.  He recieved permission to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.  He, and those helping him, worked hard.  They were focused on their work; they knew what they wanted to accomplish.  There were other people who didn't like that they were rebuilding the wall.  They sent messangers to Nehemiah"saying, Come, let us meet together in some one of the villages in the plain of Ono."(see Nehemiah 6: 2)  Nehemiah recognized that "they thought to do me mischief."(see Nehemiah 6: 2)  He sent a reply back to them.  Nehemiah 6: 3 reads: "And I sent messengers unto them, saying, I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you?"  He did this with all 4 of their attempts.  Nehemiah was firm in his decision; the wall was finished in just 52 days!

Justice and Mercy

Rules are great and terrible, depends on which side you are on.  They are important to keep us safe, and they allow us to grow.  What happens if rules are established that we can't possibly live up to?  We are all found in this predicament.  The rules are the rules of Heaven.  We all agreed to live them before we even came to earth, so that we could have a chance to progress.  The problem is that in order to succeed we have to be perfect.  If we can't do it, how can it be paid in full?  I was reading through some old Ensigns the other night, one talk really caught my attention.  I have included a quote from it.  The talk is from James E. Faust.  It's title is, The Atonement: Our Greatest Hope.  This part really stuck out to me:

Sick and Tired

For the past few days I have been sick.  It is no fun being sick.  I have a cold; the sore throat is not any fun.  I have been takeing medicine, but I still don't know what is wrong.  The weather has been really cold.  This isn't helping my cause.  I think I need to figure out something different to get rid of this.  Maybe I need to recoup.  On this same subject, I would like to address those of us who may be sick and tired, spiritually, who haven't been able to find help.  To get better takes medicine, it takes change, and it takes time.  Just like what I am going through with the cold, concoring spiritual sickness takes this too.

One Wild Day

This is an interesting picture.  It is of course a stop sign, but it has a different way of saying it.  I really like this stop sign because it is different.  The day this picture was taken has an interesting story behind it.  As you can see looking at me, my tie is tucked away inside my suit pocket; this is because of the events that happened before this photo was taken.
Elder Thomas and I were teamed up doing missionary work this day.  We were on the way to some people we wanted to try.  Earlier this week, as you can see, it snowed.  It snowed quite a bit but that wasn't the worst part.  The wind here in Billings can get blowing good, so one thing we have to watch out for is drifts of snow that appear in the road, especially back roads.  Well, as we were headed to try some people we hit one of these drifts going pretty fast.   We hoped we would brake through it, but to our great disappointment, it was a very big drift and we got stuck.  Because of our momentum, we made it far into the drift and we were high centered and stuck. 
We tried to dig and push our way out, but we weren't going anywhere.

Accident

Yesterday Elder Wells and I were leaving Walmart.  As we were stopped at a stop sign, an unfortunate event happened.  The Lady in the car behind us lost her footing on the brake and bumped the back of our car.  We found a place to park and went out to inspect the damage and visit with the lady.  She was very sorry and shook up.  The car had no damage, it was just a bump, so we talked with her about God and we went our separate ways. 

Moveing

It is always hard to leave places you really love.  Packing up and moveing is challenging and not very conveniant.  As a missionary I have the opportunity to move around to different places a lot.  Sunday, I left the city of Glasgow that I really learned to love.  It was hard saying goodbye to so many friends.  I have now moved down to Billings; it will be an exciting new start.  

Leaves

With fall well on its way, the leaves have been falling.  Most of the trees up here have pretty much lost all of their leaves.  It is an exciting time of the year seeing the world around change from fall to winter.  This change brings a lot of work.  Yesterday I saw a lot of people out racking and cleaning up the yard before it gets too cold.  Elder Leslie and I even had the privelige of helping an older lady clean up her leaves.

Being a missionary in Montana, I get to drive a lot.  This last week we went down to Billings for a conference,  this trip alone was over 270 miles one way.  Cars have these cool mirrors that we can look into and see things behind us that we couldn't see unless we turned our head around.  In these mirrors we can see the territory we just covered, and we can see the cars coming up from behind us.  We use them to help us be safe while driving.

Roads of Life

I have traveled up and down a lot of roads, but this one caught my eye.  This road is in St. Marie, Montana.  This is a old Air Force base that has been shut down for quite a few years.  As you can tell, this road hasn't had a lot of travel on it and hasn't been kept up, and slowly it is being overrun by the grasses and weeds.