The Last String

In 1886, the English painter George Frederic Watts unveiled a canvas he simply titled Hope. What viewers expected was something triumphant — a figure standing tall, bathed in light. What they got instead startled them. A woman sits hunched atop a darkened globe, blindfolded, clutching a lyre. Every string but one has snapped. The sky behind her offers almost nothing — just a single, faint star.

Critics were confused. This was hope? Where was the glory, the confidence, the victory?

But Watts understood something that every pastor knows from sitting at hospital bedsides and kitchen tables where marriages are unraveling. Hope is not the feeling you have when everything is working. Hope is what remains when almost everything has been stripped away. The woman in the painting does something remarkable — she leans her ear toward that one remaining string and plays it. She makes music with what she has left.

That is the portrait Scripture paints as well. The apostle Paul, shipwrecked, beaten, imprisoned, wrote to the Romans that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope — a hope that does not put us to shame.

You may feel as though every string on your instrument has broken. You may be blindfolded to what God is doing. But there is still one string. There is still one star. Lean in. The Almighty is not finished composing your story, and the music He draws from broken instruments is the most beautiful sound in heaven.