Piano Lessons (Part 4)
A candle is lit. They are huddled, knelt in whispered prayer. Like so many times before, a hush falls over those gathered for this sacred time and something begins in silence. But it’s like no other time.
Years have yet again passed for our piano player. A generation even, some might say a lifetime. Her youngest has just come home from her second year in college and the quiet house once again has some youthful energy that she and her husband have missed dearly. The house still seems to come to life for a few hours every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday afternoon when her students come by, but it isn’t the same. She’s not the only one to grow older, we never are. The students grow, too. Around the time that her youngest went into high school, she stopped taking beginners. Not for lack of interest or passion. Perhaps it was to keep the familiar close. Perhaps it was to cultivate changing desires and growing passions. Perhaps a bit of both. She could see some part of herself in each of them and that refreshed her. She heard the songs of their lives, the symphonies yet to be in their own souls and wanted to be a part of them.
She plays every Sunday now. Sometimes for the choir, or the new youth choir (they keep her on her toes.) Sometimes for an offertory or a special piece that the senior pastor has asked for. She doesn’t play for the hymns anymore, though. A few of her students have taken the bench and are trading Sundays for that honor. As much as she loves those songs, she loves even more to listen to those students play them. It was easier than she thought to step away. She saw them and knew them and loved them and that’s what good leaders do, they nurture and cultivate someone to carry on for them. They know when to walk away.
We are but a song, friends, and every song has a glorious beginning and an equally glorious end. Yet so often songs overlap and we might forget the glory with which we came into the world and feel overshadowed by another’s as they do. This must not be so, for every song is written and written well, it is up to us to play the song with our lives, to be the song and let the Composer receive the glory. There is no fade out for the soul, at least not to His ears. The sounds of your being, your life, resonate in the lives and memories of one another and in the eternity of every moment. There is blessing in the end. There is a richness in learning to listen to the songs of others.
At the perfect moment in the silence, she begins. There is an eternity in this moment, too. It doesn’t flicker like the candle, though it does whisper like the prayer. Every sincere prayer is perfect and this one is no different. In an “amen” of silence, her fingers light on those keys again.
Kneeling there, her eldest daughter in a beautiful wedding dress whispers and giggles and prays with the love of her life. It is a match made in heaven and blessed on earth, wrought from the lives and moments of two young people so deeply in love that their eyes cross simply when they think of one another. They pray while she plays and they are different and the same all at once. The sounds of “Great is Thy Faithfulness” flow once again through that holy place that is her and through that holy place that is that sanctuary. If she was able to think at all, which she was not, she might have thought that this was the very moment that she was made for. The Composer would smile and nod and listen, but also know that she was made for so many more.
May you know holy moments. May you slow down and know the silence that begins and ends the most beautiful things in life. May you craft and sculpt carefully the lives entrusted in your care. May you take yourself seriously so that you can take them seriously, but not take yourself too seriously. May you learn to let go and to listen, for someone must carry on after you. May you know that you are a good song, with a glorious beginning and a glorious end that pleases the Composer. May you learn to live in, and to love, the eternity of the moment. And may you find blessing even as you bless. May you cause God to smile and nod and listen. And may you know that you are made for so much more.
1 Comment
Yes.