I’ve started taking piano lessions again, just like I did when I was a teenager. I played the piano for about three years back then, and then I quit because I wasn’t very good at it. You see, I’m pretty much tone deaf and I’m also rhythmically impaired.
Now I’m playing the piano, not because I’m good at it, but because I enjoy it! What a spiritual awakening these piano lessons have been: It has made me aware just how often I try to be good at something. It also makes me aware how much those who love me also want me to feel that I am good, they want to build up my feeling of “goodness”. You see, when I talk about how bad I am at playing the piano, everyone rushes in to say “Oh, I’m sure you’re not that bad!”
The truth is that I am having a lot of fun with my piano-playing. It gives me so much pleasure to make noise, and whereas “not being very good” was enough to keep me from playing when I was a teenager, it really doesn’t matter very much to me now. What freedom there is in doing something, not because I am good at it, but because I love to do it!
Is this a taste of the freedom God created us into? Galatians 5:1: “It is for freedom Christ has set you free. Stand firm, then, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery!”
Friends, I am bad at playing the piano, and I am having fun. I am free!
Queries for prayerful consideration:
What freedoms might I be missing out on because I want to be good?
Susanne Kromberg's Musings 