Tickling the Ivories

"I will play music before the Lord"

2 Samuel 6:21

Okay, can we talk about my cat playing the piano?  Honestly, she's so funny... Every once in awhile, she jumps up on the keyboard, walks up to the high notes, then turns around and walks down to the low notes.  And sometimes back again.  Then she has to make a decision.  Either she sits down and makes herself comfortable right there on the piano keys, or she jumps up onto the top of the piano to sit, or she gets down.  I know cats like to be up high, so I could understand it if she were using the keys to get herself to the top, but she doesn't always do that.  So it certainly seems sometimes, as though her goal is just to play the instrument.

And you know what?  She's not bad!  Her randomly chosen melody is always enjoyable.  It's never a tune I recognize, but I can't have heard them all, you know?  But the reason that the music is pleasurable to me is not because of the cat, but because of the piano.  The instrument is designed to make music, which means she can do that without training, without a discernible sense of rhythm ~ heck, without even fingers. 

You, my friend, are a cat.  And I'm a cat.  And our work for Him is the piano.  Well, for purposes of this illustration, anyway.  We are designed to do something beautiful, without even being trained.  Ephesians 2:10 says "we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." 

I like that verse.  And I've known it for a long time, that He has things He wants me to do, to show and share my faith to others, and to show my appreciation to Him for salvation.  But I think sometimes we hesitate to do them.  I'm helping out in the Children's Department this Sunday, and I'm not particularly looking forward to it.  Children are not my "thing".  I'm crazy about my own,  but I don't feel I relate well to them in groups, generally speaking.  At least not young ones.  So it's easy for me to say that I won't be very good at it.  But my simplest efforts to serve these kids will be music to Him.  I love the "songs" that my cat plays.  How much more will my efforts please the Lord?

~ "All the house of Israel played music 

before the Lord 

on all kinds of instruments" ~

2 Samuel 6:5