His Extravagant Gifts

If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:11 NIV)

On a normal Thursday evening a couple of weeks ago, my daughter and I arrived at her piano teacher’s house at our usual time. Ms. B met us at the door like always, and like always, she was smiling broadly. But as we stepped into the foyer, she paused, clasping her hands dramatically before her, took a deep breath, and said, “I have a surprise for y’all.”

Ms. B always greets us with enthusiasm and delight, and my seven-year-old daughter, who has been taking piano with her for just over a year, is always equally delighted to be arriving for her lesson. Ms. B has a gift for encouraging her pupils, for letting them know she is delighted in them. But Ms. B’s unusual greeting prompted me to observe that her smile was a little wider, her eyes a little more sparkly, her body a little more poised with anticipation than usual. What could this unlikely surprise be? In the second or two before she spoke again, possibilities flooded my mind. An event she wanted to take my daughter to? A mid-year recital plan? What kind of surprise could a piano teacher have for her youngest student?

“I,” said Ms. B, punctuating each word as she spoke slowly and with emphasis, “am . . . getting . . . a . . . baby . . . grand . . . piano!”

My daughter and I exclaimed with pleasure and delight on Ms. B’s behalf. We knew that the lovely old console piano in her living room had been a sixteenth birthday gift from her parents, but that she had always wanted something more grand (forgive the pun). We also knew this meant that her students would spend their lesson time at the new piano. What an experience that would be! At home, we have only a humble electronic keyboard, so my daughter relishes her lesson time in no small part because it’s a joy to play a real piano.

But Ms. B was not finished.

“That’s not all,” she said, waving her hands in an attempt to get us back on track. “I,” she said, once again speaking slowly and dramatically, her smile growing even wider, “am . . . giving . . . my . . . old . . . piano . . . to . . . Y’ALL!”

It took a second or two for her words to sink in. Giving us her piano? The piano on which she had played for fifty years? The piano on which countless students had learned to make music?

“But–the delivery . . .” I began falteringly.

When my daughter started taking piano, we had considered buying a used instrument. What we discovered was that since our house is on a rather steep hill, and you have to ascend a flight of stairs to get to the front door, having a piano delivered would cost three times as much as delivery to a house with its entrance at street level. In short, the delivery alone would cost about twice as much as a used piano. Add tuning to that, and it was a bundle of money. Not unaffordable, but a definite extravagance. I attempted to buy a piano from someone on a local Facebook resale site, but the deal fell through–after we rented a truck, enlisted the help of a friend to move it, and gave the seller a down payment. With that experience under our belts (it took some persistence to get our deposit back and reimbursement for the rented truck on top of that), my practical husband made it clear he had had enough of trying for a private purchase, and rightly so. With the loan of a keyboard that was sitting unused in my sister-in-law’s house in the offing, we set the idea of a real piano to the side, resigned to waiting for a time when we no longer live on a hill.

Ms. B knew all of this.

To read on, click over to The Glorious Table, where the rest of this post is living.