TitanicViolinA person, who wishes to remain anonymous, recently paid $1.6 million dollars for a broken violin at an auction in London. The violin will never be played again. It is still valuable, though, because of where it was last played and who played it. A musician named Wallace Hartley played that violin on April 15th, 1912, on the deck of the Titanic.

Wallace Hartley and the other members of his band are reported to have played the hymn “Nearer, My God, to Thee” as the Titanic cruise ship slid into the icy North Atlantic ocean. Ten days later, Hartley’s body was recovered with his violin still strapped to his back. 

It is believed that the violin was returned to Hartley’s grieving fiancée. Years later, the Salvation Army had the violin for a time before they gave it to a violin teacher. In 2006 that violin was discovered in the attic of a home in Britain. After years of rigorous testing, experts have proved that this really is the violin played by Wallace Hartley on the Titanic.

Hartley’s German-made violin was a gift from Maria Robinson, Hartley’s fiancée. On the base of the violin is this inscription: “For Wallace on the occasion of our engagement from Maria.” So far, hundreds of artifacts from the Titanic have been sold, but the $1.6 million dollars paid for this violin is by far the highest price paid yet.

Have you ever felt like your life has become no more useful than a broken and waterlogged violin? Perhaps your life is not working out the way you had hoped. Maybe you feel unloved and wonder if the shattered pieces of your life will ever make any sense. Did you know that your broken and shattered life is even more valuable than Hartley’s violin? Jesus even said that nothing in the whole world is more valuable than your soul (see Matthew 16:26).

Your real value is not tied to how good looking you are, how talented you are, how much money you make, or even how hard you work. Thomas Brooks, an English preacher (1608–1680) put it this way, “There is no love nor loveliness in us that should cause a beam of

[God’s] love to shine upon us.”

You are valuable because you were made by an all-powerful Creator who implanted an eternal soul in you. That is why God says “I have loved you with an everlasting love;therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness” (Jeremiah 31:3). We know that God loves us because Jesus volunteered to endure the awful punishment of our sin for us. Jesus “…loves us and released us from our sins by His blood” (Revelation 1:5).

God’s love makes it possible for us to know that Him personally, both now and forever. We will enjoy God’s never ending love for us when we give Him our broken and worn out lives. Jesus said, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). You don’t have to worry about God turning you away if you come to Him admitting your own brokenness. “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise” (Psalm 51:17).

We can rejoice in our brokenness, as King David did, and know that, “the lovingkindness of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him…” (Psalm 103:17). When a person puts his trust in what Christ did on the Cross, God pours out His love on him and begins a relationship that is intimate and unbreakable. “We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:16).

Handing our broken lives over to Christ and trusting what He has done to pay for our sin gives us a sweet assurance of how immensely valuable we are! “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us eternal comfort and good hope by grace, comfort and strengthen your hearts in every good work and word” (2 Thessalonians 2:16–17).