I seldom get the opportunity to play our church’s lovely new piano - a hybrid acoustic/electric. And after the last time I played for worship, I may never be asked again.
I butchered a hymn. A most beloved one, at that.
Things went well for the first two or three songs, and through the first verse of the hymn Great is Thy Faithfulness. But when we started the chorus, written on the next page, something changed. The new piano seemed to have transitioned to a completely different key without being told to.
The organist looked at me sideways, wondering. The worship team looked at me from the other sideways, questioning. I glared at the music notes to be sure I was playing the right ones, and plunked harder, hoping whatever had gone amiss would correct itself and restore harmony.
The louder I played, the worse it all sounded.
I can’t remember being so discombobulated while playing the piano for a church service. (Except perhaps the Sunday when an irreverent spider dropped on highest C and waltzed to low G, but I don’t like to talk about that.)
After a few chaotic bars, I stopped playing the piano and began playing the blame game. Had to be the new piano. Not me. I’ve played that hymn thousands of times.
At the start of the next verse, I tried playing again, and musical peace reigned. The thing fixed itself, I thought. But when we transitioned to the chorus on page two, the awful dissonance resumed, along with the sideways looks.
Just then I glanced at the song’s key signature on the second page – and wished I could slide under the piano’s pedals. The first page of the hymn was written in the key of D, while the chorus on the next page was in E flat. (For non-musician readers, playing in the same key as other musicians really matters.)
I had to apologize to the piano. I’d been so sure it was to blame. All the evidence pointed that way until I discovered that the problem had nothing to do with the piano – it lay in a simple, unintentional mistake. The lady who placed the music in the musicians’ binders hadn’t noticed that two of the filed hymn copies were in different keys, or that they’d gotten mismatched.
Blaming comes easy to most of us. It likely came easily to the skeptics who asked Jesus if someone was blind because of his parent’s or his own sin. Before he healed that blind man, sent him jumping and leaping for joy, Jesus set them straight. “Neither one,” he said (my paraphrase.) “This happened so people could see God at work in him.”
Next time you find yourself playing the blame game, think again. Even when it seems obvious, situations are rarely what they seem. And never forget that God is at work in the world in ways far beyond our narrow assumptions.
