Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

Today's reading titled Slum Songs was written by Sheridan Voicy.

Katura is a small slum in Paraguay, South America. Desperately poor, its villagers survive

by recycling items from its

rubbish dump. But from these unpromising conditions, something beautiful has emerged. An orchestra.

With a violin costing more than a house in Katura, the orchestra had to get creative, crafting its own

instruments from their garbage supply.

Violins are made from oil cans with bent forks as tailpieces. Saxophones have come from drain

pipes with bottle tops for keys. Chellos are made from tin drums with noki rollers for tuning pegs.

Hearing Mozart played on these contraptions is a beautiful thing.

The orchestra has gone on tour in many countries, lifting the sights of its young members.

Violins from landfills, music from slums, that's symbolic of what God does.

For when the prophet Isaiah envisions God's new creation, a similar picture of

beauty from poverty emerges, with barren lands bursting into blooming flowers, deserts flowing

with streams, cast away war tools crafted into garden instruments, and impoverished people

becoming whole to the sounds of joyful songs.

The world sends us garbage, Kachura's orchestra director says.

We send back music.

And as they do, they give the world a glimpse of the future,

when God will wipe away the tears of every eye,

and poverty will be no more.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is Isaiah chapter 35.

...