The Analogy of the Five-Stringed Guitar

In our mission, we were allowed to have musical instruments in our apartments, with the understanding of course that it wasn’t to take away from the work. With this allowance, several missionaries purchased guitars and ukuleles, and they moved around the mission as missionaries ended their missions and didn’t want the extra weight going home. One such guitar had been promised to me and was delivered at a zone conference. During interviews afterwards, I sat in the chapel strumming, waiting for my companion. The guitar was missing a string, which is obnoxious, but I’ve popped enough strings on previous guitars that one missing string isn’t a big enough obstacle to stop me from playing. Even if it’s not very good.

But for some reason, that day our mission president thought it was good. I didn’t realize he’d walked in until he said, “That’s really pretty. But you’re only playing with five strings?”

I laughed. “I’ve broken a lot of strings in my life. I’ve learned to play around it.”

He smiled. “You know, I think the Lord sees us like that. We’re instruments in His hands. Sometimes we have broken strings, but the Lord still makes something beautiful with us.”

I loved it. I added, “And our job is to give the Lord as many strings as we can. Even if our best is only five.”

Sometimes we feel like a five-stringed guitar in terms of our level of perfection and what we are doing to serve the Lord. Sometimes we may even feel we have only two strings, especially compared to the full orchestra that others seem to be. But there are (at least) two problems with this style of thinking.

First: In our imperfect state as mortals, we cannot hear exactly the music we are playing. We can know our standing with God, based on our strivings to obey His commandments and constant communication with Him, but in this life we will never know exactly what God is doing with our strivings, with our talents, without obedience. In this state of mortality, we cannot know the impact our music has.

Second: We can’t be sure we really are guitars and really should have 6 strings. Heavenly Father, the master musician, is also the creator of these instruments, and He knows how to help us to become who it is that He sees in us.

I read a fabulous talk by Patricia Holland, called “The Comfort Wherewith We Are Comforted” in her book co-authored with her husband, Jeffrey R. Holland. I haven’t been able to find it online, so anyone wanting to read it is welcome to borrow the book, but I wanted to include some excerpts from the talk that fits so well with the purpose of the analogy of the guitar and what end we hope to achieve, what we need to do to feel like we truly are instruments in the hands of the Lord, independent of our number of strings.

“The kinds of virtues I wish to stand for, if I am able, are personal, not professional. I would like to be known as a wife, a mother, and a friend—a personal, caring friend. I would hope these modest goals can qualify one as an exemplary woman…

“In order to speak about service, I must begin where all things begin: with God. Many of us want to serve but we do not—or feel we cannot—either because we are consumed with our own problems or because we simply lack the confidence to reach out. All of us want to be more charitable, more generous, and more loving. We have been told over and over again that a true sense of self-worth comes from service—that to find your life you must lose it. Yet too often something blocks our ability and our efforts.

“It is to those who desire to serve, but who feel they lack the courage, strength, or ability, that I wish to speak. To do so I need to speak about God.

“While praying one evening about how to address this perplexing problem, I felt that I was led directly to the words of Paul. In a little known and seldom quoted line from 2 Corinthians, I read: ‘Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in trouble, by the comfort wherewith we are comforted of God.’ (2 Corinthians 1:3.)

“I cannot express the power and peace I felt when I read that scripture. What a world of meaning and instruction condensed into those simple lines! Concentrate with me for a moment on the first promise—that God is the God of all comfort…Inasmuch as all of us need comfort at so many different moments every day of our lives, it is wonderfully reassuring that our God, our Father, is ‘the God of all comfort.’ That phrase ‘of all comfort’ means to me not only that there is no greater source available for solace and strength, but that technically speaking there is no other source…God comes to us as ‘the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort.’ What a reassurance and reward just to know that such all-encompassing help is available to us in our anxious times. No wonder we lovingly call him Father.” (Jeffrey R. Holland and Patricia T. Holland, On Earth As It Is in Heaven [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1989], 35-37.)

This is a fabulous talk, or chapter of a book as the case may be, and it left me with a stronger resolve to seek to give the Lord as many strings as I can. If, in fact, it’s strings I am offering him :)