Unshackled Moments ~ 6-14 ~ Stay Tuned

I listened to my Pandora, as I usually do in the mornings, and this song came on my Instrumental Piano station.
 
I began to think about the beautiful sound of the music, especially the piano part. I remember the old piano at my grandmother's house. It looked old, and it was covered in little framed family photos. It made for a lovely decorative piece in one of the two guest bedrooms, but it sounded horrible.

I flipped the lid up, revealing the old, yellow ivory, and tried to play it once. I doubt that the piano had been tuned since before I was born. Some of the key stuck and wouldn't pop back up once they were hit, and I guess a few strings were broken because there were a few keys that failed to produce any sound at all. I didn't play on it more than a few seconds before I closed the lid and gave up. The music, if you dared to call it that, was painful to hear.

In contrast to that I remember seeing a piano that had survived a house fire in the late 90s. The body was covered in soot and there were charred places here and there on the sides.. The bench looked like a sculpture of ash that would disappear in a puff of smoke if touched or breathed on too hard. There were some stains on the top and down the side were something that had been kept on the piano had melted into an unrecognizable blob. I figured that between the heat of the fire and the water the firefighters pumped into the house, the piano was a lost cause. It surely looked like toast.

I watched as the owner of the house stepped over the scorched remains of her memories and made over the rubble of what remained of her pace of security and comfort. There was nothing left. It was a complete loss from the looks of things. When she made it to the piano she raised the lid. Her fingers turned black. She stood behind the burnt bench, reached over and begin to play. I felt so shocked to hear a beautiful melody begin to pour out. The piano played beautifully. Burnt and marred, surrounded by loss and destruction the piano responded to its owner's touch. The woman had tears in her eyes and a smile on her face as she played.  All was not lost after all.

We can use pianos as decorations and props, and probably other things as well, but they were made to make music. We are like those pianos. Our lives can serve any number of uses and go down many paths, but regardless of form and style, we were created to worship our Creator and make a melody to Him with our lives and hearts. In order to do so we have to stay tuned to His touch. It doesn't matter how good our appearance may be if the music is out of tune and our keys stick when God touches us. It also doesn't matter how destroyed we look or feel if we can still  praise. If surrounded by loss and destruction of everything in this world that produces comfort and security and covered in burns and scars we can still produce music of praise and beauty when the player places His hands on our keys, something amazing happens. Like the image of a single flower blooming in a bed of lava, there is something miraculous in beauty from ashes that inspires and moves those who witness more than that same sound or vision in a flawless environment ever  could.

Maybe you, like me, look back on life and see scars and scorch marks. There's little beauty in the rubble of the bridges that have burnt behind us and out from under us, and life feels like we've fallen into ash, choking on what's left of life. But Isaiah 61 tells us that God desires to give us beauty from ashes and an oil of joy to replace our mourning and praise in place of heaviness. So while it still may be black and dirty our lives can produce something beautiful that makes people wonder in awe at the power and glory of God.