The Valuable Masterpiece in Your House

You are a priceless work of art—and you are worth saving.

August 1, 1944 was the liberation of Paris from the Nazis. But more than just people were liberated.

Rose Valland was a quiet art teacher in France. She was quite proficient in art history and eventually became a volunteer curator at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris. OK, so this wasn’t the big fancy-schmancy Louvre that every tourist heads to, but it caught the attention of the Germans when they hit town in 1940. The Germans had begun systematically looting art from all over France—from both museums and private collections. They used the Jeu de Paume Museum as their repository, a depot before shipping the confiscated art to German locations.

This is where it gets interesting. By this time, Rose Valland was full-time at the museum and she was the only French citizen the Nazis allowed to remain working at the museum. She never let on to the Nazis that she understood German. She worked quietly, but she heard the Germans’ plans—and she secretly wrote it down. She kept the French Resistance informed. When trains were loaded with art for Germany, she informed the French Resistance, so they would avoid blowing up those trains.

As the Allied forces gained ground, a group of soldiers called the Monument Men was assigned to find the stolen art pieces and return them to their rightful owners. These men relied heavily on the meticulous records Rose Valland had secretly kept.

Rose Valland saw great value in the art, and she risked her life because she saw it as something worth saving.

The apostle Paul described us as God’s handiwork (Eph. 2:10)—His masterpiece. At best, we see ourselves as imperfect; at worst, we see ourselves as we really are: rebellious sinners who walked away from our Creator. Either way, we hardly see ourselves as God’s handiwork. But God sees us as He intended us to be, and through Jesus Christ, He seeks to bring us back.

You are a priceless work of art—and you are worth saving.

“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph. 2:10).