The Piano Lesson

I will admit I was nervous about leading music for the Good Friday Worship Service.  I am new to this, and very well aware that it was not a usual service.  The team only had three songs to do, and I was confident that they were appropriate, but they were also less familiar.  In addition to that there was a song I have been interested in doing for Good Friday for several years now, and my son, Austin, had agreed to do it as special music with me.  It was going to be the first time Austin played piano in front of a group of people.  We practiced a lot, and things were going well.  Everyone was committed to coming to practice on Thursday night, and I took my son, Cody, in early to set up the sound equipment. 

The previous night we had had a choir practice for Easter, and it did not occur to me then that it was a problem that the keyboard wasn't working.  I guess I figured it was something Cody would know how to deal with, but when the time came for the team to practice no one could get it to work.  I felt bad for the people who were standing helplessly waiting for practice to begin while a few guys messed around with the piano.  Finally we decided that the keyboard player would have to play guitar for practice.  Cody took the keyboard off the stage, and began trouble shooting.  He eventually discovered the problem but could not quite find the solution, and our local keyboard expert had a dead cell phone.  We could not reach him with a call, a text, or an email.  

Practice would have been better with the keyboard, but it went well enough. I, however, was beside myself because I was afraid Austin would not be able to play the following night.  I worried, and I fretted, and I prayed, but I did not have peace all night.  Friday morning I got up and I knew I could not concentrate on reading my Bible because I was too upset, so I did things backwards and wrote my journal entry first to try to release my frustration.  After I had read I went downstairs to look at my email, and I realized that though I had read the Holy Week emails our pastor had sent out, I had not read the accompanying scripture passages.  I decided to spend some time doing that, and the first one I came to spoke right to the trouble I was having.

Mark 11:22-24 says, "Have faith in God," Jesus answered.  "I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain,  'Go throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."  I know that God has power over any obstacle, but sometime I get tricked into thinking that He is putting the roadblocks there.  When I realized that Austin and I had been called to present that song Friday night I knew that the keyboard would work.  From God's perspective it was done. I love the way the verse says, "you have received," not "you will receive."  I still struggled though.  I struggled with the thought that I just wanted to do the song and it wasn't really God's will.  I thought I should be content with not being able to follow through with the plan, but I couldn't seem to find peace in that.  The more I struggled the more I realized that the reason I couldn't be content to cancel the song was because I was suppose to cast the mountain into the sea.  

The physical obstacle was only half of the lesson though.  Mark 11:25 reads, "And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in Heaven may forgive your sins."  My first reaction, when the keyboard wouldn't work, was to blame the last person who successfully played it.  I was holding something against someone, and it was making me miserable.  I had to let go of my frustration toward the person I thought was responsible for the problem, and leave it in God's hands.  As I thought about this I specifically remembered an appointment I had completely forgotten to show up for earlier that week. It helped me remember how often I let others down.  Within a short time after letting go of my grudge the phone rang and I was given the information Cody needed to correct the keyboard issue.  I still insisted on getting there a bit early to get it working, though it only took about a minute to fix. God was definitely teaching me a faith lesson through the circumstances.  The keyboard problem may very well have been an enemy attack, but the piano lesson was from the Lord.