His Extravagant Gifts

If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:11 NIV)

On a normal Thursday evening a couple of weeks ago, my daughter and I arrived at her piano teacher’s house at our usual time. Ms. B met us at the door like always, and like always, she was smiling broadly. But as we stepped into the foyer, she paused, clasping her hands dramatically before her, took a deep breath, and said, “I have a surprise for y’all.”

Ms. B always greets us with enthusiasm and delight, and my seven-year-old daughter, who has been taking piano with her for just over a year, is always equally delighted to be arriving for her lesson. Ms. B has a gift for encouraging her pupils, for letting them know she is delighted in them. But Ms. B’s unusual greeting prompted me to observe that her smile was a little wider, her eyes a little more sparkly, her body a little more poised with anticipation than usual. What could this unlikely surprise be? In the second or two before she spoke again, possibilities flooded my mind. An event she wanted to take my daughter to? A mid-year recital plan? What kind of surprise could a piano teacher have for her youngest student?

“I,” said Ms. B, punctuating each word as she spoke slowly and with emphasis, “am . . . getting . . . a . . . baby . . . grand . . . piano!”

My daughter and I exclaimed with pleasure and delight on Ms. B’s behalf. We knew that the lovely old console piano in her living room had been a sixteenth birthday gift from her parents, but that she had always wanted something more grand (forgive the pun). We also knew this meant that her students would spend their lesson time at the new piano. What an experience that would be! At home, we have only a humble electronic keyboard, so my daughter relishes her lesson time in no small part because it’s a joy to play a real piano.

But Ms. B was not finished.

“That’s not all,” she said, waving her hands in an attempt to get us back on track. “I,” she said, once again speaking slowly and dramatically, her smile growing even wider, “am . . . giving . . . my . . . old . . . piano . . . to . . . Y’ALL!”

It took a second or two for her words to sink in. Giving us her piano? The piano on which she had played for fifty years? The piano on which countless students had learned to make music?

“But–the delivery . . .” I began falteringly.

When my daughter started taking piano, we had considered buying a used instrument. What we discovered was that since our house is on a rather steep hill, and you have to ascend a flight of stairs to get to the front door, having a piano delivered would cost three times as much as delivery to a house with its entrance at street level. In short, the delivery alone would cost about twice as much as a used piano. Add tuning to that, and it was a bundle of money. Not unaffordable, but a definite extravagance. I attempted to buy a piano from someone on a local Facebook resale site, but the deal fell through–after we rented a truck, enlisted the help of a friend to move it, and gave the seller a down payment. With that experience under our belts (it took some persistence to get our deposit back and reimbursement for the rented truck on top of that), my practical husband made it clear he had had enough of trying for a private purchase, and rightly so. With the loan of a keyboard that was sitting unused in my sister-in-law’s house in the offing, we set the idea of a real piano to the side, resigned to waiting for a time when we no longer live on a hill.

Ms. B knew all of this.

“I am buying the new piano from a store,” she said, “and part of my package is that they will move my old piano to a new home. I’ve already checked, and it’s no problem.”

You could have knocked me over with a feather, as they say. I managed to stumblingly offer a few words of thanks, doing my best to express my amazement and appreciation for this extravagant gift. My daughter was simply beaming, her smile as wide as Christmas morning. I knew she was thinking something along the lines of, My own piano! At last!

As I sat in the car for the next half hour, my thoughts racing, I couldn’t help seeing the pieces come together before me like a puzzle. The failed private purchase. The prohibitive delivery costs that came with buying from a store. The fact that Ms. B, who is much beloved by my daughter and clearly feels the same about her, has no children or grandchildren to whom she might bequeath her piano, her sixteenth-birthday-present piano with its sentimental value, which could have simply been traded in and gone to an unknown home. Had we managed to purchase a piano back at the beginning, we would not now be receiving this particular piano–Ms. B’s piano–and for the mere cost of a piano tuner. It was overwhelming. It felt like anything but happenstance.

Do you ever wonder at the extravagance of God’s gifts? I do. I wonder why we, who have everything we need and more, are chosen to be on the receiving end of such generosity. I can rationalize it to some extent–theologize it, if you will. God delights in us. He delights in Ms. B and my daughter, in the love between them. He delights in arranging circumstances in advance to benefit us. He makes all things work together for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28 NIV).

In a world that is broken and hurting, a world filled with refugees and disease, poverty and war, I simply can’t ascribe to an American Dream-type of faith. But I am amazed by what we have, by the life we are able to lead. I amazed when an everyday gift comes in the shape of a piano. I am humbled, and it takes effort at times to receive extravagant gifts freely, without feeling like I have too much already and do not deserve even more.

In our homeschool Bible time, we just wrapped up the long story of Joseph, which seems apropos. Joseph, receiver of extravagant gifts. Joseph, who is the favorite, and then the slave, and then the blessed, and then the powerful. Joseph, who uses his extravagant gifts to give back. That, I think, is the key. Scripture says, “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded,” (Luke 12:48 NRSV).

Not that we need to keep accounts in a legalistic fashion, but that we ought to allow our hearts to be softened and molded by the Lord’s extravagant gifts, both those that are heaven-sent, like grace and forgiveness and newborn children, and those that come to us in the hands of others, like a piano. We ought to then, as the contemporary saying goes, “pay it forward,” and be on the lookout for opportunities to be extravagant ourselves, not only with our financial resources, but with our time and our skills and our spiritual gifts. Christ’s gift to us, of eternal salvation given on the cross, was surely the greatest extravagant gift of all the ages. How can we pay his gifts forward today?

Harmony Harkema has loved the written word for as long as she can remember. A former English teacher turned editor, she has spent the past eleven years in the publishing industry. A writer herself in the fringe hours of her working-and-homeschooling mom life, Harmony also has a heart for leading and coaching aspiring writers. Harmony lives in Memphis with her husband and two small daughters. She blogs at harmonyharkema.com.

Photograph © Clark Young, used with permission