Sacred Music Sunday: Sweet Hour of Prayer

I’ve spent three decades as a musician. Mostly I’m a vocalist. When it comes to instruments, I’m a dabbler. I’ll pick up an instrument, play it for a bit but never long enough to get good, and then get bored with it. I’m bad at a lot of instruments. I’ve always felt like a deficient musician because I don’t play the piano.

I took lessons, I can plunk out a few hymns in a pinch, and I know what keys go with which notes. I try not to subject anyone to my playing, and when people ask me if I play, I respond with “A little bit but not very well.” They assume that it’s false modesty when it’s really the truth.

When I bought my house, I decided to get an inexpensive used piano. I had grand visions of playing it and finally getting good. I found one for a reasonable price and it sat in my living room as a decoration and conversation piece. It was desperately out of tune but I kept putting it off.

Earlier this week I finally got it tuned after owning it for three years. With a freshly tuned piano, I decided to try my hand at playing. I started out with Sweet Hour of Prayer because it’s one of the easiest hymns in the book and one I used to be able to play with little difficulty. I could barely remember how to play! My hands cramped up from using muscles I hadn’t used in years. I tried a few other hymns in the hope that I would remember how to play one of them. No such luck. I have my work cut out for me if I want to get back what little skill I had in the past.

Prayer itself is kind of like my piano playing – it takes effort and practice to build that relationship with the divine. Sometimes it can be hard to get back into it after a period of not practicing. But just as my hymnal and piano are there waiting, God is there waiting as well.