The Cellist at the Crumbling Wall

On November 11, 1989, two days after the Berlin Wall began to fall, Mstislav Rostropovich — the great Russian cellist who had been exiled from the Soviet Union for sheltering dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn — grabbed his cello, boarded a plane to Berlin, and sat down on a simple chair beside the crumbling concrete.

He played Bach. Suite No. 2 in D Minor. No stage, no concert hall. Just a man, his instrument, and a wall that had imprisoned millions for twenty-eight years coming apart chunk by chunk behind him.

Crowds gathered. Some wept. Some stood silent. Camera crews broadcast the image around the world — this white-haired exile playing music of breathtaking beauty against the backdrop of a tyranny being dismantled in real time.

Rostropovich understood something instinctive: when liberation comes, when chains break and captives walk free, the only adequate response is music.

The psalmist understood it too. "Sing to the LORD a new song, for He has done marvelous things." Psalm 98 is not a gentle devotional hymn. It is the eruption of praise from people who have witnessed God's saving power with their own eyes — salvation so unmistakable that all the ends of the earth have seen it.

When God acts, when His right hand accomplishes what no human power could, the response is never quiet analysis. It is a cello at a crumbling wall. It is jubilant song that cannot be contained.