A little over a year ago, the Church gave my wife, Marjorie, and I an assignment to locate our church members in Durkee.  One day we knocked on Lela's door and made two new friends in the persons of Lela and Tony.  Thereafter we checked in on them once a month.

Last June 22nd was Lela's 70th birthday.  Margie decided to take a birthday party to Lela.  She baked a pie, and then loaded the pie, our daughter Ivy, and her fiddle into the car, and we went to Durkee.  Margie presented the pie to Lela, whereupon Tony said, "You can bring me a pie on my birthday."  We asked him when his birthday was, and what was his favorite pie?  On our kitchen calendar on August 12th it now says, "Tony, apple pie."

Ivy got out her fiddle and played several numbers.  Lela then told us about Uncle Ben Young who played fiddle.  Uncle Ben had even made a fiddle.  "We used to have it," she said.

"We still do," Tony said.

"No, we don't," Lela said.

"Yes, we do," Tony said, and headed for the back room.  In a minute he reappeared carrying a beat-up fiddle.  Its bridge was missing.  It had no strings.  The sound post was loose and rattling around inside.  The fiddle looked only fit for the garbage can.

We have a son who plays fiddle.  He actually got his fiddle from a garbage can.  Someone retrieved a beat-up fiddle from the garbage and gave it to Nathan.  It was missing its bridge, strings, and sound post, too.  In addition, the sides were caved in.  Nathan fixed it, and that's the fiddle he plays.  It's the fiddle that Ivy learned to play on.  She'd sneak into her brother's room when he was gone and practice on it.  That's how she learned to play.

We asked Lela and Tony if we could take the fiddle to Nathan so that he could fix it.  Tony thought that they'd better wait until they had some money set aside to do it.  But you know, and I know, that the time will never come when any of us will have extra money set aside to fix an old fiddle.  So I asked them to just give it to me, I'd take it to Nathan and let him look at it, he'd tell us how much a repair job would cost, and then we'd get back to Lela and Tony with the amount.

We took the fiddle home with us.  We stopped on the way, and showed it to Nathan.  He didn't wince.  He simply said, "I can fix that!"

Lela was a lot like that old fiddle.  When we first met her, her bridge was out, too.  She didn't have her teeth in.  She had oxygen hoses in her nose.  She was overweight.  She couldn't walk without a walker.  She had heart trouble, diabetes, and emphysema.  She was a used-up piece of humanity.

But Lela had two things going for her.  One was her devoted husband, Tony.  Tony left his work every noon, and came home to fix lunch for her.  He did all the cooking.  He took Lela to the doctor.  He did everything for her, never mind the sacrifice.  His own joints aren't good, but fixing them would have to wait.  Lela came first.

The other thing Lela had going for her was her Heavenly Father.  She was a daughter of God.  She probably didn't think about that very often, but it was a fact.  Paul, in the New Testament, talks about us being the "offspring" of God.  There is a real reason why God wants us to refer to Him as "Our Father in Heaven."  In Ecclesiastes (12:7) it says that at death "The dust shall return unto the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it."

Lela's spirit lived with God before she came to earth.  Her spirit matured to the point that she was ready for her turn on earth.  Her parents provided her mortal body, and God put her spirit into that body.  He told her that life on earth was going to be hard.  He told her that she'd make lots of mistakes and commit sin.  She'd suffer physical pain.  But he assured her that He would provide a Savior for her, who, upon the condition of repentance, would atone for and pay for all of her sins so that she could be worthy to return to her Father's presence.  In addition He told her that her Savior would make resurrection possible.  Because He would live a sin-free life, and because he would be the Son of God, He would have the power to resurrect Himself.  After being crucified, and after His body had lain in the tomb for three days, His spirit would come back, reenter His body, and the two would never again be separated.  The great free gift to mankind is that this same resurrection will happen to all.

I can see God looking at Lela's broken-down body much like Nathan looked at the old violin.  He doesn't wince.  He just says simply, "I can fix that."  That's what He does.  Lela's body will be resurrected in its perfect form.  If we could see Lela right now, we'd see her in spirit form.  She'd be young and beautiful.  After she's resurrected, she'll have her body back, and it will be young and beautiful, too.

Just like the old violin, she'll be resurrected and made useful again.  It's done through God's amazing grace, which is what Ivy will now play on Uncle Ben's old violin.

 

(The family had requested "Amazing Grace" as a musical number.  Ivy played the piece while standing in the open air on the hilltop that is the Durkee Cemetery.  I then placed the fiddle in its case and presented it back to Tony.)