Saturday 11 June 2005 subscribe | unsubscribe | discuss | archive

From technical to terrific

by Bruce Wadd

During the first 17 years of my life a great percentage of that time was spent learning the intricacies of the piano, with hours of scales, arpeggios and melodies of increasing difficulty.

Since that initial learning stage this special instrument has brought many hours of enjoyment, for both myself and others. But let me dig a little deeper with you!

There were many times when my various teachers would say that I had to take a new piece home and practice just one section of it over and over at a very slow pace. I was not allowed to play it at normal speed till the next lesson. This advice frustrated me incredibly because my music lived in my head, not my fingers.

Grudgingly, though, I would spend hours going over and over particular difficult sections of Beethoven’s sonatas & Bach’s preludes and fugues, wondering whether any improvement was actually occurring.

Amazingly at the next music lesson the teacher could tell whether I had practiced slowly or not. I never really worked out how they knew, but the fluency achieved on the practiced piece became long lasting and more mature.

God works the same way. Sometimes he asks you to step forward into the unknown, step by step at a painfully slow pace. We usually want to run ahead, thinking that we know best, and it is only later on that we understand more fully, that God knows what’s best!

TODAY, step out confidently knowing that…

“…all that happens to us is working for our good,

if we love God and are fitting into His plans.”

Romans 8:28