Some Thoughts on Grace
God has the power to provide you with more than enough of every kind of grace. That way, you will have everything you need always and in everything to provide more than enough for every kind of good work. (2 Corinthians 9:8).
My first piano teacher was named “Grace.” I had been forced to wait to start lessons until my cousin got a new piano and gave us her old green upright piano. At nine, I was not insulted to learn from John Thompson’s “Teaching Little Fingers to Play.” But I only had Grace Combs one year before she married a Baptist pastor and moved to Kentucky.
She sent me to the lady who became my musical mentor for the next decade, Betty Sutton. She understood me well—what motivated me, what to use to challenge me, how much affirmation I needed. She was a perfect example of grace in my adolescent life.
When I was eleven, Jeanne Newberry invited me to be the accompanist for a children’s choir with kids not much younger than I was. That went on for years, and cemented my connection between music and the church.
A year later, Bob Balch invited me to play in worship. He was the manager at Hunt’s Department Store, and the volunteer worship leader/adult choir director at First Baptist Church. He made sure I played in worship until I graduated from high school. And he encouraged me to discover the organ and its magnificent possibilities.
Then there was Ophelia Minnick, who was old before I ever met her. She awakened a deep love of scripture, and made memorizing scripture a lasting and significant cornerstone of my life.
These people and many more gave me the affirmation and motivation to contribute to the life of the church through music. That gave me the assurance that I should respond when I felt God’s call to the vocation that has been my life.
It is my prayer that Christ Our Shepherd and its many members can be conduits of God’s grace, especially for growing Christians like I was.
We have many parts in one body, but the parts don’t all have the same function. In the same way, though there are many of us, we are one body in Christ, and individually we belong to each other. We have different gifts that are consistent with God’s grace that has been given to us. (Romans 12:4-6a)
