The Cello That Sang from a War Zone

In the 1990s, during the siege of Sarajevo, a cellist named Vedran Smailovic did something the world never forgot. After a mortar shell killed twenty-two people waiting in line for bread, Smailovic carried his cello to the crater in the street and began to play. For twenty-two consecutive days — one for each person killed — he sat in formal concert attire amid the rubble and performed Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor while sniper fire crackled around him.

No one asked him to do it. No military commander ordered it. No audience purchased tickets. He played because he believed that beauty still mattered, even when everything around him insisted it did not.

That is what purpose looks like when it finds you.

The Apostle Paul wrote from a Roman prison, "For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do" (Ephesians 2:10). Notice — the works were prepared before the circumstances arrived. El Shaddai, the God who is more than enough, placed something inside you that the world's chaos cannot silence.

You may feel like you are playing your instrument in a war zone. Your marriage is under fire. Your finances are cratered. Your health is uncertain. But the music the Almighty composed for your life was never meant to wait for perfect conditions.

Your purpose is not cancelled by your pain. Sometimes it is revealed by it.