While in Little Rock, Arkansas, I learned about Ed Stilley, a farmer who trusted in the Lord but was 
having a hard time making ends meet for his family of a wife and five children. In fact, as late as 1969, he still plowed his fields behind a mule. One day, thinking he was having a heart attack out in the field, he lay down on the ground and received a vision he believed was from the Lord. In the vision, God told him to make guitars and give them to children. If he was obedient, God would take care of his health.
OBEDIENCE
So Ed Stilley got to work making guitars out of whatever materials he could find. He used scrap wood
and lumber, frequently using two or three different types of wood on one instrument. Old door hinges, a pork bone, leftover metals from welder friends, circular saw blades, door springs, marbles, aerosol cans–all were put to use as he experimented with sizes and shapes to get the sound he wanted. His very first banjo was made from pine, Masonite siding and an aluminum cooking pot. At one point, he began painting each of his instruments red and when asked why he chose that color, he explained that barn paint was the most readily available. But every instrument was inscribed with these words: True Faith True Light Have Faith in God.
ART
Most of his instruments can’t be tuned to a modern scale, but his creations became a form of art. At one point, a recipient of one of his guitars came back and asked him to sign the guitar for him. He refused, saying he didn’t want to take any credit for it. He wanted all the glory to go to God. Another time someone asked him to take off the words he put on every one of his instruments. He told them to go buy one at a store, they had plenty of guitars with nothing about God on them.
DOUBTS
I have to admit, when I walked into the room with all these strange looking guitars and 
mandolins and ukeleles hanging on the walls, I was not impressed. I thought they must be hard up for museum exhibits to put these things on display. But as I listened to Ed Stilley’s story, it convicted me.
So often I wonder if my little stories are really doing anything. Shouldn’t I be out serving the poor, helping to feed the hungry and clothe the naked instead of hiding out in my house writing make-believe stories that will likely never hit the best-seller lists? And yet, here was a man who worked with what he had to be obedient to what the Lord told him to do. Did it make any sense? No. He was a farmer who often sang religious hymns, but he had no training in guitar making nor any formal music training. But if God told him to do it, he did it. He surely knew his guitars couldn’t compare to the fancy ones sold in stores. But God told him to do it, so he did it. The “homemade” look of his instruments didn’t embarrass him. He obeyed the voice of God and let God worry about how they looked.
So, until God tells me to do something else, I’ll keep making up stories. I’ll use the materials I have on hand–people, situations and settings–and let God worry about how the stories compare to the fancy 
ones on the bestseller lists. Unfortunately, I have to put my name on them, but His will be in there, too.
