What Made My Professor Angry

"Play something for me," directed Professor Spector at my first piano lesson at Pittsburg State. I launched into parts of Beethoven's Sonata Pathetique. I say "parts" because my previous piano teacher had wanted two of us to play the sonata at her recital, so she had divided it between us.

About midway through, he abruptly stopped me. "Why are you playing only parts of this sonata?" he demanded.
I explained about the recital and the need to cut parts here and there.

The professor began pacing the floor, irate because of the musical atrocity I had committed. "Do you realize that chopping a Beethoven sonata is like whacking away on a fine painting?" he said, pointing to a picture on his wall.

He was right. A master painter has a purpose for every brush stroke just as a good composer or author never inserts irrelevant details. That's what we expect from human creators, yet we sometimes accuse our loving Creator of allowing irrelevant, insignificant sections in our lives. However, Ephesians 2:10 says that we are God's poema--the Greek word for "poem," a literary form in which every word is placed with exacting preciseness. "We are God's poema...to do good works which God prepared in advanced for us to do."

Since each of us is God's poem, we can have faith that He has carefully selected each detail of our lives. Only when looking back over our lives will we be able to detect the significance of some of the details, and the significance of other details will remain a mystery to us until we get to heaven.

Dear Father, thank You for being "the Blessed Controller of all things" (I Tim. 6:15 TLB).

"The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want...Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever" (Psalm 23:1, 6).