Six — almost seven — years ago, close to my birthday, I bought a portable keyboard. A piano-type keyboard for music, not a computer one for typing.

It was an impulse buy that I had no business making. Life had fallen apart, we were in the midst of a real-time nightmare, and I didn’t even know where we were going to live, let alone how I was going to pay for a $100 keyboard that I uncharacteristically threw on my credit card.

But I bought it on a whim, because everything seemed so dark and awful, and I needed something to grasp hold of. I distinctly remember standing in Best Buy thinking, I’ve always wanted to learn piano. I’ll learn piano. For my birthday. Yes, that will help.

Completely irrational thinking. But for some reason, buying that silly keyboard gave me a bit of hope.

Flash Forward to tonight:

I never learned how to play that keyboard. I played around with it some; banged out a few tunes: hymns, mostly. A couple of worship songs. But I never did anything with it.

But, my girl did.

Tonight I’m listening to her play song after song on that keyboard. It’s actually a bit beat up now. She has played it till it is nearly worn out. And she’s taught herself every note, every chord. It has been good for her soul — and mine — for her to do so. Both during those very dark, seemingly hopeless days, and in these days now, where we are starting to experience renewed joys.

He is faithful.

So I’m lying here in my bed, working while listening to her play music from Journey, Broadway musical tunes, an occasional Adele song and — my favorite — a beautiful arrangement of “Jesus Paid it All.”

It’s actually a gift of grace to us both.
 It is prayer, for me to listen. It is prayer, for her to play.

And it is an acknowledgement that God is sovereign, even in the small things. That He sees and knows far beyond what we see and know, in any given moment.

And He acts in ways that are beyond our scope of understanding.

Sure, it was an irrational purchase. Sure, some irrational purchases turn out to be bad ideas in the end, just as much as they were in the beginning.

But just as surely, I haven’t regretted this one for one second.

“What am I to do? I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the mind also; I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the mind also.” (1 Corinthians 14:15)

Originally published at All Is Well. Used by permission.