How Do We Hear God Among So Many Other Voices?

It was the worst day of the week…

The day of my piano lesson.

Each turn of the bicycle wheels brought me closer to my impending doom.

My piano teacher was revered by the parents of our small town and  deeply feared by the town’s young piano students…

She trained, she told us often, with one of the most famous symphonies in the world.  Her top students regularly won state competitions. I was not one of her top students.

After six years of piano lessons I still couldn’t sight read the simplest piece.

Practice was torture. And if practice was torture, a lesson for which I had not practiced was sheer terror.

“No! No! No!” she would shout, rapping my fingers with her pencil. “Play it this way.”

Then she would play the piece in a way I couldn’t imagine ever playing it.

The greatest humiliation happened when the next student was waiting in the corner of the room.   There were stories, whispered among the teacher’s legion of sufferers, of students reduced to tears in front of their best friends.

Only two more blocks to her house.  I started to ride my bike across the bridge.  In the middle of the bridge I stopped and looked at the river and dam below.

Taking a deep breath, I reached into the saddle bags of my bike, pulled out my music books and threw them into the river.

It was pretty clear I wasn’t going to today’s lesson.

After momentary relief, my terror rose again as I realized I would have to face the real authority in my life:  My mother.

I had just thrown my music books into the river, books for which she  had paid several dollars apiece.  The piano teacher would probably call and ask for money for the lesson I didn’t take.  I was in trouble.

I rode my bicycle home, took a deep breath and opened the door,

“Why are you home so early?” my mother asked.

I told her.  She was silent.

“That’s OK,” she said . “You could have quit anytime.  It was always up to you.”

Years later I realized my mother had taught me a deep and important lesson that day.

She taught me whose voice I should hear…

Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. John 8:47

She taught me whose voice I should fear and whose voice I should follow…

“Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the duty of all mankind.  Ecclesiastes 12:13

Most of all, she taught me about God, who stands ready with His grace, saying “It’s always been up to you.  You can come to me anytime.”