I am a piano player who is fairly proficient. I like to play to entertain myself every so often. It is also an emotional outlet when I’m frustrated or sad or feeling down.

I have a piano that seems to get out of tune about every six months when the seasons change. The temperature change causes the piano innards to expand or contract and a few pins in the pin block start slipping, causing the tension on the strings to loosen. Soon there are a few notes with strings that have slipped down a half step. The musical result is a discordant mush, especially when the notes that have slipped are around the middle registers. Those notes are always being used and they are very important.

In the past I have tried to get by with having the piano tuned every year, but as I said, strings start sliding out of tune right around the six month point and soon I can’t stand to play because it sounds so terrible.

This happened again today. I sat down to play a particular song that particularly required certain notes, two of which had sunk out of tune, and I found it sounded wretched. I tried to compensate by using a different octave, but that didn’t work. I needed those notes. I had to stop. It hurt to listen to the sound being made.

As I sat there looking at the keys with a fair amount of resentment, the Spirit pointed out to me that Heavenly Father feels the same way about us when we have things that are out of tune in our lives and He tries to do something important with us that especially requires those particular characteristics that we have allowed to slip. Other righteous characteristics can’t compensate for the ones that are out of tune, so that particular “song” goes unplayed until we get ourselves back in tune using repentance.

I thought my piano could get by with a tune-up every year, but it looks like I’ll have to tune it up more often, perhaps every six months. In our lives, how often do we get a repentance tune-up? Annually? Semi-annually? Weekly? Wouldn’t it be best if it were daily?

Tomorrow I’m substitute-teaching the CTR 8 class on the lesson of forgiving one another. I realized that I had a lot of forgiving to do, even though I did a fabulous job of hiding the resentment from myself. I control my anger pretty well (would those qualify as famous last words?) and it is usually on the level of irritation which I can squelch without too much hoo-ha, so I thought I was okay, but today I realized that even though I might not even say anything, and even though I try to forget about it, I still have to forgive. The wounds have to be healed.

What in your life is out of tune? I’m not asking you to tell me about it. Just think about it and do some praying about it. What are you allowing to slide in your life that you need to work on?

Image: Piano Tuning in Clay West Virgina, http://gregsgoodsandservices.com/piano%20tuning.htm
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