Antonio Stradivari was a seventeenth-century violin maker whose name in its Latin form, Stradivarius, has become synonymous with excellence. He once said that to make a violin less than his best would be to rob God, who could not make Antonio Stradivari's violins without Antonio. He was right. Stradivarius violins could not be made without him.

Certain gifts were given to that craftsman that no other violin maker possessed. In the same vein, there are certain things you can do that no one else can. Perhaps it is parenting, or constructing houses, or encouraging the discouraged.

There are things that only you can do and you are alive to do them. In the great orchestra we call life, you have an instrument and a song, and you owe it to those around you to play them both sublimely.

Max Lucado, best-selling author.