Five men stood silently in the front yard on the cool October morning. We had come to pick up a free piano and were waiting for a few sisters to arrive. Our church has a history of moving pianos, as well as entire households, so this was fairly routine as far as moving pianos goes. The night before had been tough for us—trying to break through to a young woman too numbed by desire to even communicate with those who cared about her most. Sadly, we were not necessarily strangers to these situations, either.
A car pulled up, and a middle-aged couple got out who appeared to be the owners of the house. They invited us inside to inspect the piano. The house looked like no one had been living there, but the piano appeared to be in good enough shape, at least to five men who don’t play the piano. And it came with a piano lamp. The woman played a quick, rough song to prove it worked. Convinced, we proceeded to roll the piano toward the door. As we were moving, the two sisters arrived and began conversing with the woman. While the men were securing the piano to the trailer, something more important was going on. One sister had mentioned to the woman that we were the church in Toledo. The woman was overjoyed to learn this and began sharing.
This piano had once belonged to her husband’s mother while she was alive. Now their own children had since grown up and left the state. She and her husband had also moved to Wisconsin and only came back once a month to work on the house. For some reason, they had only wanted to give the piano to a church. But when they had finally made arrangements to give it to a church, their contact could not ever find anyone available to pick it up and in the end let it go. So they made the decision to just post the piano for anyone. They had no idea that we were believers until the sister had mentioned it. As we were talking, the husband grabbed our hands and started to pray, and a few other saints joined in. After praying, he just stood there on the sidewalk crying.
Although we had originally been in a hurry to avoid the coming rain, no one remembered as the tears streamed down his face. We were all grateful. We were grateful to meet these two strangers and to see the Lord’s hand in such a routine event. Someone we deeply cared about had somehow grown so cold the night before over wanting something for herself. And yet in the morning, a total stranger—a grown man—could be moved to tears after giving us something precious to himself. His small sacrifice, trust and sensitivity to life was both an encouragement to us and a reminder to press on in our love toward one another—a reminder we will have anytime we gather together and hear the piano played.
– JR