The Sacrifices of God - Phil Kauffman

Good morning, greet, greet you and Jesus' name this morning.

Glad to be here with you.

M in the rain.

Came over the pass last night. I was looking and

looked like it could be kind of nasty up there,

but it was just rain and lots of it all

way over. Rain and when we left, so we're getting

we're getting weather also and moisture, which is good for us.

Good to be here. I was thinking about how that

I admire.

You.

I have lots of friends here.

We've had lots of long conversation over the last how

many years here and there and since we left, but

probably maybe before we left, with young and old.

And it's just.

Admirable to be able to come back and find a

group of people that are focused.

On God. Appreciate that of you this morning.

For a few thoughts, I'd like to read from Psalm

fifty one. If you were to turned with me, read

the chapter there. This is the story of David after

it's sin and come back and come back to God

and his.

Prayer to God.

As you read the prayer, you can sense deep emotion

in David, like there's something going on. I feel like

I relate to David in a lot of ways in

this story. Number one, I'm intensely emotional, and emotions come

out in lots of different ways for different people. But

my emotions feel like they spill over, bubble over the

top when.

I'm in front of a crowd.

I do better sitting back where Lyndon does than I

do here. Yeah, everything goes and circles inside.

So bear with me.

But this story is about the sacrifices of God, and

so I'd like to look at that, look at those points.

Have to read the chapter so Psalm fifty one, have

mercy upon me, O God, according to the loving kindness,

according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies brought out

my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse

me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and

my sin is ever before me against thee the only

have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight,

that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest and be clear,

when thou judgest. Behold, if I behold I was shapen

in iniquity and in sin my mother, did my mother

conceive me? Behold Thou desirest truth in the inward parts

and in the hidden part. Thou shalt make me to

know wisdom. Purge me with hissop, and I shall be clean.

Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Make

me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which

thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy face from my

sins and blot out my iniquities. Create in me a

clean heart, o God, and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not

thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy

of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free spirit.

Then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall

be converted unto the deliver me from blood guiltiness. Oh God,

Thou God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing

aloud of thy righteousness, O Lord, opened down my lips,

and my mouth shall show forth thy praise. For Thou.

The desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it, Thou

delightest not in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are

a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart. O God,

Thou will not despise, Do good and thy good pleasure

untos I, and build build thou the walls of Jerusalem.

Then shall they be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness,

with burnt offerings and whole burn offerings. Then shall they

Shall they offer bullocks upon Thine altar. So there's several

things in here that David is hitting upon.

Praying for.

Committing, confessing, praying specifically talking to God directly, and so

some of these things he prays for remission of sins,

he prays for sanctification, prays for sincerity, praise, and at

the last he prays for the church or for his

fellow believers. So these points that I just said, I

like to kind of work over and think through as

we go down through my discussion. And this discussion is

in a sense a bit of discussion. And as I

as I think through think through some of these things,

it feels like I kind of go back and forth

in my mind on one part then the other kind

of because it all blends so well, and to separate it.

Is a little tough to bear with my randomness.

But to begin with this is uh my own personal journey.

A few months ago I was I was reading this

chapter in my personal devotions and felt cold aloof from God.

Seemed like my connection meditation with God was minimal, seemed

like the you know how it is, Life undulates and

and sometimes you're up and sometimes you're down for some

of us, and and it was.

A down on time.

It seemed like I was doing all the right things,

I was sacrificing. I was kind of giving the things

I need to give, but it wasn't the right sacrifice first.

And it hit me different as a read.

That of all the sacrifices I can do for God,

a broken it says, a broken and a contrade heart.

Though that is the ultimate sacrifice. And we know about

ultimate sacrifices in the military, to talk about one that

does the fighting and gets killed and he gives the ultimate.

He gives himself.

For the better betterment of the war, the country, or

whatever he's fighting for. And the ultimate sacrifices is this,

it's it's yourself. So we'll look at these things as

we go. But we tend to think that our time

or are maybe our right living or maybe our money, things,

things to do for the church, good deeds, pleasantness. Maybe

my saturdays that I give up for studying are sacrificial,

which they are, but it seems like God's looking for

something of extremely great value, something that's close to him,

and he's and has two things it talks about. It

says the sacrifices and and so those two sacrifices that

it says is broken and contrite heart. And we kind

of kind of we we tend to look at those

things as kind of one big package. And I want

to separate that package and open the box and maybe

dig in and.

See what that looks like. Through this.

A little story I have on my own. A few

weeks ago, on a Friday, it was cold, it was

like today, it was cold and rainy, and it was

it seemed like it was not quite freezing, but cold

and rainy, and it had rained a bunch in the morning,

and I was doing office work and then I thought

that I'll go out to her crew and get him

some coffees and stop at Ego Bakery and get some

cinnamon rolls.

And so did I did that.

Dustin and I went out and on the way back home,

I had a bunch left. On the way back, just

coming out of town, there was there was a.

Indian lady walking down the street.

The sidewalk just to my left and a little light

blanket over her, and she was walking and the rain

had kind of stopped it, but the wind was blowing

and it was cold, just walking around out on the job.

I just, you know, just that bitterness, and I thought,

you know, she's she looks cold and in.

That blanket probably is pretty wet. And I kind of shot.

Past, and I started thinking, and so I swung around,

came back and came down the street. She was still

walking there, and I and I when I was doing this,

I was thinking, well, I got some cinnamon rolls.

She's probably hungry too. I had a few left over.

So I put him in a little tin there and

whatever it was left and pulled up to the street.

She was just ready to walk in the street, right

from the sidewalk, and I pulled up and I said,

pulled up. I just put the window down on the

passenger side. I said, are you are you hungry?

Yeah?

She is, so I said, well, here's some cinemon rolls.

I just handed out the window on that side.

And she said, hey, could you give me a ride?

Said yeah, where are you going? Well, I just need

to go up to the close to the homeless shelter,

So I said, yeah, jump in. So I turned the

heater on and she got in and immediately started eating

the cinnamon.

Rolls and drove along and just quiet. She wouldn't talk much.

And the Indians from the tribe up there, I know

a few of them. We've worked up there some. So

I asked her, do you know this person you know

trying to make conversation? And she yeah, she thinks so,

but she wouldn't talk much. And as we got close,

I said, are you cool?

Yeah she is. I said, well, I have something back

here I can give you to warm up.

And I and over the years when I lived in

the valley. One time, I don't know why, I was

in coastal and this nice car heart blankets like fifty

inches by sixty inches, a khaki look and fleece on

the inside. And it was a thick blanket and I've

always had it wrapped up and stuck in the seat

of my pickup. And we go somewhere do something that

children will dig it out and wrap it around their

cold if we're the you know, camping, And I've had

that thing in there for I don't know, probably ten years,

And so I said, well, I got something back here

for to warm me up. So she got out and

I went around the other side and got the blanket,

and she just stood there and I took the blanket

put over her shoulders, and she wrapped that.

Thing up and triuned to loft to her where she

was headed to her tent. And you know, watching this.

Maybe ten years of no memories, some sentimental value walk away.

And I got to thinking about that, How sacrificial was that,

even compared to what God's asking?

Was that much sacrifice at all? In a sense it was.

It was close in that blanket wrapped up lots of

little children kept you know, that togetherness, of that feeling

of family that I know where I can get warm,

that I've heard over the years, was gone.

I gave it away, gave it up. But then, as

I thought, I don't.

Think God was nearly as impressed with my blanket sacrifice

as he is about my brokenness or lack of it.

This blanket sacrifice did not fall into the category in

any way you look at it a broken or contract.

It was something else. So a few questions here, What

is spiritually broken? What does that mean? Is it the

same as being physically broken, a broken arm, broken leg,

color going. Are the reactions and emotional anguish the same?

You know?

How? It is when I remember a few years ago,

or maybe a bunch of years ago, when my son

Dustin and Chad Troy were playing in a tree at

Oakville and.

Chad fell out of the tree.

And landed busted his wrist, and I think the bone

almost came out.

It was pretty nasty and hurt.

I mean, it was intense. Is being spiritually broken look

like that? What does a broken and a contrite heart

look like?

Act like?

Does a broken and a contrite heart think and pursue

the same things as it did before?

Brokenness?

Got a few verses here. I'm just gonna read through

for Samuel fifteen. And Samuel said, hath the Lord as

great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifice, as in obeying

the voice of the Lord we hold to obey is

better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fati Rahms

Mark twelve says. And to love him with all the thought,

with all thy heart, with all the understanding, with all

the soul, with all the strength, and to love his

neighbor as himself is more than all whole burnt offerings

and sacrifices. So I'm thirty four. The Lord is nigh

on to them that are of a broken heart and

save us, such as be of a contrite spirit. So

think about brokenness and then think about contrite, and we'll

work into this a little bit more.

But when we think of something that's broken, it's just broken.

It might be a toy, it might be a car,

it might be a piece of furniture. You know, it

doesn't work very well, but it's still there. But then

contract is another level. A broken contract would give the

indication if you look it up as being crushed. So

this is talking about being broken and then being crushed.

It's different.

It's a little bit the same, but it's different. It's

different levels.

So in John.

Twelve, Jesus was talking about this from a different, different angle.

He said, verily, verily, I sent say unto you, except

a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die,

it abideth alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth

much fruit. He that liveth loveth his life shall lose it.

He that late hateth his life, and this world shall

keep it unto life eternal.

So, like I said, we understand what brokenness is. But

dying is that what crush looks like.

And we know how life goes, and you'll you can

go to Eugene, you can go sometimes you can go

right in Halsey here. We have them over there, the

lady that was on the street. They have they're broken,

they're just nothing, laughed hardly, but they don't have any

place to go. And most of the time these the

end of these people are tragic. And we talked about

in Sunday School, the coping and the and the things

that happened, the wine, to mitigate, to get away from it,

to stop thinking, to erase some memory for a few minutes.

Interesting enough, in Isaiah fifty seven, it says for us,

say the one who is high and lifted up, who

inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, I dwell in the

high and holy place. And also with them who's of

contract and lowly spirit. To revive the spirit of the

broken or lowly, and to revive the heart of the

contract or the crushed. God has a plan for broken

and crushed people. So I would like to depict this

process a little bit. Part of our work in Central

Oregon is his selling gravel and crushing gravel, and and

I bought a released leased the pit there, but I

bought the equipment from the old man that had it.

And this man was a very frugal man and kind

of put together a package of old equipment and we

run this equipment in the last few years. We've kind

of put a lot of money in to.

It to make it work. And and it is a

process to make gravel.

I'm gonna draws a picture on the board for you

for you to think about a little bit, and uh,

can we get some ideas what I'm thinking. I've never

been accused of being a narveiss, so were with me?

H m.

Okay, So we have we.

Have what we the process we use in our in

our qurey is a is a is a jaw crusher,

and we have.

A rules crusher.

But since this is an old equipment, that takes more

pieces of equipment to actually do the same job. But

it does depict what I was talking about here.

But these rocks that come in here are maybe two

foot rocks at the most are about two foot.

We have big boulders that we are really big and

we have to hammer that was getting down to size.

But they drop into this thing and this this is stationary.

This is what they call it stationary part, and it

just solid steel. And then there's a little another piece

that's solid that actually is on an eccentric wheel for

your mechanics and machinery machinists to understand mechanics.

This thing goes up and down.

So so when you have when you have a rock

comes in and this thing is running, there's a stationary

part and there's a piece that looks like this, and

the rock goes in that in that come in that triangle,

and this thing keeps going like this, like just like that,

and the rock goes close and comes back, and so

it opens up for the rock to fall in.

And then when it goes down in there, it crushes

it little bit.

It comes back out and does it again, and it

keeps doing this, and these rocks.

Fall in and this thing just running slow, just crush crushing.

Once you're down in there gets over, you're gonna be crushed.

And what comes out of here.

Is just the width of whatever they said, which is

about eight inch rock that comes out of here and

it hits the belt and as it runs along here

on a belt, it has to get away from here,

so this process can keep going and it'll drop into

it what we call our.

Small job, and it's a smaller one, which the small the.

Distance at the bottom of this one is more like

maybe three inches. So it goes from two foot down

to eight inches. And this we dropped to three inches,

and then it hits another belt and as it goes

down drops over here, and it drops down into what

we could call them set of rolls, and they're about

four foot steel rolls about this wide and four feet tall,

and they're running together like two wheels, and there are

about three quarters of an inch apart or somewhere in there.

And the rock that comes in here is three inches

and when it comes out of here three quarter.

Or whatever you set that. And then and then as it.

Comes out here, it goes through a screen and eventually ends.

Up in a a big pile of rock out here.

This process is intense, and all those pieces that work

constantly maintenance and constantly are breaking.

So it's a it's kind of a process to actually

make rock. But but what was interesting to me.

My thoughts here that when I first got into this,

we went out there, the man wanted to sell it

to us, and we were they're talking and working, and

I watched it, and as we bought in, I went

out there day after day, and the boys that were

running this thing had done this for twenty years.

They knew all about it. But there was gravel and.

Dust all over, and there was dust flying when that

thing was running. Dry rock pulling in there and just

made dust, and there was.

All over there.

Was gravel, and then there's dust on the ground and

an accumulation of dust like you don't usually see.

I mean there was.

One foot and sometimes two foot accumulated piles of dust

and just that you hit with your foot or something.

It was just kind of like the field in the

summer after the Harol's gone over the bunch.

But if you stood back and looked at this big area,

you know, every day they were cleaning up and trying

to keep it good and so it doesn't build up,

and keep it so they can access everything under all

the rolls and under all the belts.

They have it cleaned out.

But if you stood back and watched that after a day,

it looked like a disaster zone.

It was just a mess. It was just dust and.

Rock and yeah, a mess. That's broken us, and as

it goes through it's broken down, down, down, it becomes crushed.

Talk more about that, but was interesting to me to

apply that to our spiritual lives, to this chapter, how

brokenness and being crushed actually works.

In our lives.

It's messy, It opens up our true self. It exposes

the unorganized, the uncontrolled, the undisciplined and selfish me. And

when we truly break open up and start to be

USh like that, there's usually raw emotion and honesty and

tears that happen in this process in our lives. Watching

what David did in the chapter, the mistakes and the

sins were just laid out on the table. The cards

were just opened up the But the downside of all

of it is that the scars still remain, and we

know David's story after this. The scars are always there.

They're there to remind us of our faithlessness. Like Jesus scars,

there are tangible answers of our doubts. The theologian Earns

Hengstenberg says, the sacrifices which God really values and desires

our broken spirit and this broken, this c contrite heart

denotes deep, but soft and mild distress. It sets up,

no wild shriekings, no howls like those of fanatics, but

it nourishes a sorrow that is deep and persistent. The

joy on account of forgiveness and restoration to favor does

not exclude continued pain on account of past sins like

the scars. Incidentally, though, like the crushing operation, in a sense,

our spiritual value goes up as we're broken down. As

we get crushed smaller and smaller, our values go up.

So let's look at these boulders in the small piles

of rocks. Let's think about that a little bit. These

boulders that come in there, these are about two feet.

At our pit, we have boulders that are six feet

five feet huge. We have piles of them. When I

bought it, the man that had it didn't know what

to do with him, so he just put them in piles.

And there's piles and piles, And I actually bought an

excavator with a hammer, and we've broken up yards and

yards of him. But there's probably at least twenty five

thousand yards of boulders, just piles of boulders out there. Yet,

and slowly we work through them and break him down

to a small size that can be put into the machine.

But if you think about the boulder, big unbroken, solid boulder,

it looks so tough, unmovable and even majestic. It's to

look at. It is the picture. And you can take

that beautiful boulder we do it, put it in a

landscape area with some grasses and some shrubs and maybe

some other small gravel around. It's absolutely beautiful, stunning. It

just that's really neat, that boulder. But that's all it is.

It's just there for pretty. But that same boulder it's

very hard to manage and handle. And only when it's

broken down into smaller and smaller pieces can it be

movable or manageable or useful or helpful. But like we said,

it takes a lot of intense work. But if you

think about the boulder that's there, and you take that

boulder and whatever way you do it, you take the

boulder and run it through a machine and you get

it down to six inch rock. So it's went from

a maybe a three foot boulder down to a six

inch rock.

And think about.

How easily it is to handle. So you can now

pick up the rock. You can do things with the rock.

You can stack them. You can. You can load a

whole truck by hand if you need to with it.

If it's a three foot bowlder, you can't by hand.

But then if you.

Take that six inch rock and you break it down

into a two inch rock, think about how much more

manageable it is. And then when you take that two

inch rock and take it down to one inch or

a half inch, or even down to quarter inch, think

about what you can do with a quarter inch piece

of gravel and the dust that goes with that. It's

just it's just loose, it's fluid. You can dig into

this gravel with your bare hands. It's almost like the

dirt in your garden. So think about that. Back to

our spiritual life again. Spiritually being a quarter inch piece

of gravel, we are workable and we're useful. It's not

necessarily a fun process, but we are pleasant people to

be with. Sure we'll be used more, we'll be run over,

some people will take advantage of us to some extent,

and sometimes we'll feel like there's nothing left of me,

and and that's correct, But isn't that what God had

in mind? So think about the boulder in us. I'm

gonna drow another picture, and you think about all the

emotions and all this stuff inside of us. How that

you see people walking around that are boulders and they can.

Be good looking to look at.

They can be tall, they can be handsome and beautiful,

and they can be stately and.

They can be but if you, if you touch on it,

it's just so those people, those people are just a

everything inside is solid rock.

You can't work with them, you can't. They won't give

it feels like they have a hard heart or something.

It's just it's not very workable. When something happens, they

stiffen up and you have to move they will.

But if you think about someone that is opposite of that,

and you can go back to the crushed crush crush

depiction we had.

But if that whole area in here would be would.

Be just fine, fine gravel and think something comes up,

you can they're fluctuating, they can move over here, they

can move over there. You can talk to them and

they'll listen and and and they'll make room for what

you said.

They'll put it in their heads and they'll think about it.

If yeah, maybe you got a point, let's talk about that.

But then there's some people that maybe are half half older,

half rock and just solid. As you get to know them,

they're nice people.

You can get to know.

Them and and uh, and they are pretty workable.

You know, they can you can say a few things.

But as you get to know them more, you run

into this solid part and you you you you can't.

Get past it.

It's just they're just solid and and and on the

surface they're meeting people and they're friendly, but on the

as you get to know them, they.

Get harder, harder. And then I started to think about

how that.

How that the the flexibility in us has to do

whether whether or not we're crushed or we are bolder.

And so the more bolder you have and you the

less flexibility you have. And you know what I'm saying,

when you see someone that that on the surface, like

I said, they get along well, but when you get

up against something, they're they're tightening up, they're pushing back,

and their flexibility when when something when you smash their finger,

they just kind of blow up. And I realized that

as we go through life and we become more crushed,

we also become more flexible. And and we all have

seen and there's some here old older people that have

been through life. They've been pushed and shoved and slowly

broken down and broken down, and it feels like they're

just all fine gravel. And the flexibility they have in

their life for for pushback, or they have flexibility they

have for a dumb comment or a mean comment, or

somebody somebody just not being able to be workable with them.

They said, that's fine, let's let's figure this out. We'll

just work through it.

Just lots of flexibility, lots of like a balloon, it

could cut and go, but it has to do with

how crush they've been, how broken they've been. Our capacity

is only so large in all of us. That's how

we're created, created with a spiritual being that is this

big or whatever big it is. As you go in life,

you start realizing that the.

It becomes important.

That the void in there, the capacity of that is

pretty open. Sometimes it feels like I can't get my

thoughts up. But the more flexibility, the more manageable you are,

the more helpful you are, the more useful you are.

And if there are parts that are solid and bouldery,

it minimizes the capacity being pliable and workable.

We talked about this little bit.

But the people that you work with that are lots

of boulder in there, and they have answers. They know everything,

they know where it should end up.

Every topic. They come out on top.

They can be quiet and stubborn, or some of these

people are worthy and open minded. Whatever happens, they will

never give up willingly. It takes scientific facts, it takes

statistics well articulated arguments to win.

They're not interested listening.

To your heart or conceding on the basis of care,

concerned for others, but anything that impedes them, they're indignant.

When pushed back, they come up for air. Like I said,

when we have compartments of unbrokenness, we minimize our workability,

our flexibility. We also minimize the capacity for all the

things that talk about in Galatians by love, joy, peace,

long suffering, gentleness. There's just not much room for it.

There's not any flexibility in there for that. I have

found that it's not easy to maintain a broken front.

If we're not broken inside. Acting like we're broken.

Does not mean we are.

Acting like we're crushed doesn't mean we are. What is

inside comes out. Sometimes it comes out in sharp words

and sometimes it opinions, and sometimes when you see when

I am just kind of this continual lipping off with

methodic cynicism.

Maybe it's compact.

Maybe it's the indication of the limited capacity inside and

that we're far more bouldery than we'd like to admit.

Unbrokenness tends to protect what we are, and it's not

interested in looking inside to adjust or change for others good.

But with a person with a broken and contract's heart

is he is in a place to assess his weakness

to be open for help and correction. Also, it puts

us in a place to be open to asking God

for wisdom and knows it's the only way forward. Broken

in a contract man person has the capacity to hear

God and people. They can be shoved and pushed back

and still main their identity in Christ. They can be

insulted and slurred, demoted, ignored, or praised and still know

their ultimate place in Christ. Someone with a broken and

a contract heart doesn't need to have the world listen

into all his problems all the time.

He doesn't feel entitled.

People like that understand that entitlement is a mirage to

be at the top or the bottom of the social

of their social standing is irrelevant. These broken people will

happily move down the social ladder and live there to

assist struggling souls. They know that the most effective and

influential spot to be in life as a Christian is

to be broken and pliable, so they can fit in

a place below people to support the struggling ones. They

always seem to have the others best in mind, and

they tend to create healing and peace to the people

they're with and with the church and the community. They're

part of.

A broken person. A few thoughts on different thoughts on brokenness.

I was looking. I was looking.

Researching about brokenness and contractness, and just a few thoughts

that came out. The growing brokenness is a growing awareness

that no matter how hard I try, my ability to

make life work is getting worse instead of better nor broken.

We start to understand it, I don't care what I do,

it's not going to work. It's an orchestrated work of God,

who loves me too much to permit my fleshly coping

mechanisms to keep working for me. Brokenness is also the

results of the Holy Spirit working in us, changing us,

making us different.

As we're broken there's a growing experience of the reality

of Christ. And it's not a one time event. It's

always changing.

There's always more, There's always one more thing that could

be broken down a little more. I don't care if

you're twenty years, forty or sixty. More things that could

conform us to Christ's image. So how do we know

for contract or crushed? We recognize our sinfulness. That's one

thing David did in this chapter was really fascinating to

me is that he just said this.

Is me, I will own it.

I am this problem and gave it to God. Surrendering

being contract helps us realize our need for God. At

the last of the chapter, like I said, it said David,

praise for his people.

It said ands fifty one.

It says, do good, and that good pleasure and design

build all the walls of Jerusalem. Then shall they'll be

pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offerings and

whole burnt offerings. Then shall they offer bullocks upon that altar.

After we have allowed our heart to be broken and

crushed and it prayed for and supported God's people. After

we've done that, then we can go offer our typical

offerings we can put our money in the offering and

it's right. We can go help the needy ones and

it's right. But the brokenness, if it's not there all

the rest of it is a waste of time. If

we get it switched around, we're miserable people. God is

a spirit, and they don't worship him. Must worship him

in spirit and in truth. And I have one more little

story fascinating to me. Happened in nineteen ninety five, and

it was a violinist, a professional violinist. His name was

Izak Perlman. He was an Israeli American and he was

going to give a performance in New York City. And

he was pretty detailed, pretty methodic type man that had

studied all his life.

I'll read this story.

If you have ever been to Peerlman concert, you know

that getting on stage is no small achievement for him.

He was stricken with polio as a child, and so

he has braces on both legs, walks with the aid

of two crutches. To see him walk across the state

one step at a time, painfully and slowly, is an

unforgettable sight. He walks painfully yet majestically, until he reaches

his chair. Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches

on the floor, undoes the clasp on his legs, tucks

one foot back, and extends the other foot forward. Then

he bends down, picks up his violin, puts it under

his chin, nods the conductor, and proceeds to play. By now,

the audience is used to this ritual, the ones that

have seen him before. They sit quietly while he makes

his way across the stage to his chair. They remain

reverently silent while he undoes the clasp on his legs.

They wait until he's ready to play. But this time.

Something went wrong.

Just as he finished the first few bars, one of

the strings on the violin broke. You could hear it snap,

went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking,

but that sound meant there was no mistaking what he

had to do. People who were there that night thought

to themselves, we figured they would have to get up,

put on the He would have to get up, put

on the clasp again, pick up that crutches, limp away

his way off the stage to either find another violin

or else find another string for this one.

But he didn't.

Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes, and then

signaled for the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began,

and he played from where he had left off. He

played with such passion and such power and such purity

as they had never heard before before. Of course, anyone

knows that it's impossible to play a symphonic work with

just three strings. I know that, and you know that.

But that night.

Izza Perlman refused to know that. You could see him

modulating and changing and recomposing the piece in his head

as he played.

At one point.

It sounded like he was detuning the strings to get

new sounds from them that they had never heard, never

made before. When he finished, there was an awesome silence

in the room, and then people rose and cheered. There

was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of

the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering,

doing everything we could to show him much we appreciated.

What he had done.

He smiled and wiped a sweat from his brow and

raised his bow to quiet us. Then he said, all

my life, it's been my mission.

To make music.

From that which remains so Perhaps our task in this

change shaky, fast changing, bewildering world is is which we live,

in which we live, is to make music, at first

with all that we have, and then, when that's no

longer possible, to make music with what we have left.

Thank you,