She was wheeled to the front in her wheelchair this morning, violin in hand. She had been brought across the parking lot from the nursing home to attend church and was scheduled to play special music. While she tuned up with the piano, the Sabbath School superintendent exampled that this sister had been unable to use her right hand not very long ago and that she was going to play this morning.
The piano played an introduction and she began. . . halting, shaking, stumbling. It seemed she knew how to play and was frustrated at her inability. Yet after the first few notes, I began to see a beauty in this special music that was greater than many well trained and talented able bodied musicians I have heard perform.
The notes shook from the strings as they sang feebly. . ."Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. . ." In that instant I realized the message of the song. Amazing grace, not given to the strong but to the weak, not to the deserving, but to the undeserving. Not given to those who excel, but to those who by sin have been crippled, broken, and disabled, those who will never measure up. The notes of need arise from just such as these and are mingled with the perfect righteousness of Christ. The sweetness of the sound is not the sweetness of the nice little Christian who has got this thing figured out; it is the sweetness of the voice of the Son as He pleads, "My blood Father," It is the sweetness of the voice of the Father as He declares the sinner justified. The beauty of this sound over the with the trembling broken strains of our clumsy fingers on the strings of our lives, covering, changing, strengthening, perfecting. . .How sweet the sound!
To use the weak things to confound the mighty. . .Beauty for ashes. . .excellence out of disability. . . Amazing Grace.
