The piano’s gone…

Seldom played.

Out of tune.

In the way.

But I clung to it…

Because it was comforting…

Reassuring…

I looked at it and heard tunes from the past…

My mother playing the one song she learned to play really well…

Me playing the only song I played well enough to be recognized as music

(Liszt’s Liebestraum if you’re wondering.)

Tunes of the past…

Hard to let go.

A few days after the piano left …

Walking through the lobby of the church…

I heard two people talking about the very same idea…

In a very different way.

I eavesdropped…

“My ideas about God…”

“And my ideas about what he wants us to do…”

“Are always changing,” he said.

“I’m always having to leave my old ideas behind…”

“I used to believe,” said the tall man, “that I knew what it meant to love others…”

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.  John 13:34

“I used to believe that I knew what it meant to love God…”

And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  Matthew 22:37

“I used to think that I knew how to be kind to others…”

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.  Ephesians 4:32

“But then God gave me new insight into His view of loving kindness.”

I guess that’s God’s way of growing me spiritually….

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. 1 Corinthians 13:11-12

You know the hardest part?” he asked his companion.

“Letting go of my old beliefs.”

“They are so comforting…”

“So reassuring…”

“Sometimes it’s easier to cling to my beliefs than to cling to God…”

For you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy. My soul clings to you… Psalm 63:7-8

“Easier to put my trust in myself than to put my trust in the lord …”

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.  Proverbs 3:5

 Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord himself, is the Rock eternal.  Isaiah 26:4