Beech Tree News Network

Recently, a guy came into my office at work and said, “You have a music degree and you play guitar, right?”

            “Yes,” I answered.

            “I have a medical problem,” he said, “and the only thing that helps me is music.  I’ve been trying to teach myself guitar, and I have a chord chart up on my wall, but I don’t understand how everything fits together.  Could you help me?” he asked.

            “I have carpal tunnel in both wrists, so I really don’t play much anymore,” I said, “but I can teach you music theory and how everything fits together.”

            “That would really help,” he said. 

            I told him that most of my stuff was in a file at my house, but I could show him at least one thing on a piece of notebook paper then bring the rest of the stuff later in the week.  I drew the strings and frets of the guitar then labeled each fret with its corresponding note, explaining the sequence of whole and half steps.

            “That’s genius!” he said.

            “No, that’s just the way the major scale is put together in Western music,” I said.  “Oriental music and music of the Mid-east have different scales.  If you want to play that music, I can’t help you.”

            “I just want to play our music,” he said, grinning.  He gave me his phone number, and I told him I’d call when I got everything together.

            Later that afternoon, I thought about how odd it was that that particular guy had shown up on that particular day to ask me to explain music theory to him.  I thought it was odd because earlier that morning, I was thinking about getting my music degree, and I told myself—for the hundredth time—what a waste of time and resources it had been, and how I should have been smarter and entered a field of study that could have made me more money.

            The next day, Greg’s son, Landon, stopped by to see his dad.  Before he left, he came into the office, where I was buried in paper work.  “It being Christmas and all,” he said, “I just wanted to say thank you for teaching me how to play guitar fifteen years ago.” (Landon worked with us that summer, and I taught him and Caleb Johnson how to play guitar during lulls in the action at New Image.)  “Playing guitar has opened up opportunities and relationships with people I would otherwise have never met,” Landon said.

            “You know, Landon, just yesterday a guy came by who wanted to learn music theory, and I’m putting together a folder for him,” I said.  “I look back on my thirteen-year-old self, in an upstairs room of a farm house on Ashes Creek, struggling to teach myself guitar chords and being frustrated because I couldn’t understand which chords belonged to what key.  I remember telling God if he would help me understand how music is put together, I would help everybody who asked me to understand it, as well.  God answered, and I’ve always kept my end of the bargain.”

            “That’s awesome,” Landon said, “Thank you.”

            Later that day, it dawned on me that my music degree was God’s answer to my thirteen-year-old’s cry for understanding.  God has supplied other means for me to make a living.  I’ve never been without, and I’m satisfied with what I have materially.  Because we are eternal beings, we have longings that money can’t always satisfy.  My longing has always been to understand.  I made another promise to God.  I will never again look at my music degree as a waste of time and resources.