Photo and Commentary ©2024 by Maylan Schurch
Friday and Sabbath, March 1 and 2, 2024
Last Sabbath, as potluck was beginning, our church administrative assistant mentioned to me that the Beginners’ (toddlers’) Sabbath School room’s piano was out of order. The sustain pedal (what we called the “long-play” pedal in my youth) had stopped working, so that when the pianist pressed on it, the chords did not keep sounding.
“Let’s check it out,” I said, and we went downstairs, and opened the upper and lower panels. As a kid I’d grown up with an upright piano in the living room, and I knew exactly what to do. However, I discovered that the “fix” was going to be more complicated than I thought. After wrestling with the machinery for a bit, and getting dust on the pants of my Sabbath suit, I reluctantly left the job until I could figure out a system for repairing it. This past Monday, more suitably clad in jeans, I tackled the dilemma again. This time, with the aid of a shrewdly-placed thick rubber band, I had it working in no time. (The rubber band was only a temporary necessity, and now has no place in the piano’s operation.)
Incidentally, this happens to be a Beckwith piano. The Beckwith company began building pianos in the late 1800s, and an online photo of one of their pianos dates from 1908. A caption under that piano announces that if you would like to purchase it fully restored, you would need to scrabble together the sum of $22,000.
Anyway, once I got our piano back in working order, I played a few chords and discovered that its tone was amazing. I closed up the panels and stood up. And then I noticed what was propped on top:
“Can there really be a higher use for a piano?” I asked myself. Even the most expensive and sonorous Steinway, enchanting the ears of a Carnegie Hall audience with a classical concert, isn’t as valuable as this Beckwith, whose pianists and class leaders week by week pour into the toddlers’ ears the astounding eternal truth that Jesus not only loves them, but loved them literally to death. My pastoral thanks go to the children’s Sabbath School leaders who use their talents and their time to teach and model the Good News.
Many songs have been written about the Savior. Why not take a moment to review His Bible bio at the link just below?
https://www.bibleinfo.com/en/topics/jesus-christ