WE MAY NEVER KNOW

WE MAY NEVER KNOW

Joe Edwards was a young man in his twenties working as a salesman for a St. Louis piano company.  They sold pianos all over the state by advertising in small town newspapers.  When they received sufficient replies, they would load their trucks, drive into the area and sell their pianos.

Every time they advertised in Southeast Missouri, the company received a postcard which said “Please bring me a new piano for my granddaughter.  It must be red mahogany.  I can pay $10 a month with my egg money.”  

Of course, the company could not sell a new piano for just $10 a month.  No finance company would carry a contract with payments that small, so they ignored her postcards.

One day, Joe happened to be in that area and out of curiosity decided to look up the old lady.  He found pretty much what he had expected.  The old lady lived in a one-room sharecropper cabin in the middle of a cotton field.  The cabin had a dirt floor and there were chickens in the house.  Obviously, the old lady would not qualify to purchase anything on credit with no car, no phone and no real job – nothing but a roof over her head, and not a very good one at that.  The grandchild she was raising was a ten-year-old barefoot girl, wearing a dress that had been made from a feed sack.

Joe explained to the old lady that he could not sell a new piano for $10 a month and told her that she should stop responding to their ads.  He drove away heartsick.  His advice had no effect at all.  The old lady still sent the same post card every now and then – always requesting a new red mahogany piano and swearing she would never miss a $10 payment.  It was so sad.

A few years later, Joe owned the piano company.  When he advertised in that area, the postcards started coming to him.  For months, he ignored them.  One day when Joe was in the area when something occurred to him.  He had a red mahogany piano on his truck.  Despite knowing that he was about to make a terrible business decision, he delivered the piano to the old lady and told her he would carry the contract himself at $10 a month with no interest for 52 payments.  He took the new piano in the house and placed it where he thought the worn roof would be least likely to deposit rain on it.  And he admonished the old lady and the little girl to try to keep the chickens off of it.  Joe left, feeling sure he had just thrown away a brand new piano.

But the payments did come in – all 52 as agreed – with coins taped to a 3×5 card in an envelope.  It was incredible!

As time passed, Joe forgot about it.  Twenty years later, he was in Memphis on business.  After dining at the Holiday Inn, he passed by a lounge where he heard the most beautiful piano music.  There a lovely young woman was playing a beautiful grand piano.

Being a pianist of some ability himself, he was stunned by her virtuosity, and sat at a nearby table to listen and watch.  She smiled at Joe, asked for song requests, and later took a break at his table.

“Aren’t you the man who sold my grandma a piano long ago?”

It didn’t ring a bell right away, so Joe asked her to explain.

She started to tell him, but suddenly Joe remembered.  She was the little barefoot girl in the feed sack dress!  She said her name was Elise and told Joe how she had learned to play the piano.  Since her grandmother couldn’t afford lessons, she learned to play by listening to the radio and duplicating what she heard on the piano.  Later she started playing in church, and then in school, where she won many awards and a music scholarship.  

The seeds that we sow potentially hold monumental harvests.  We just don’t know.  The Winans recorded an apropos song:

We give ourselves for Your cause,

We dedicate our lives to reach the lost

And though we don’t know

All whose lives we’ve touched with love.

For we may never know all the people we have touched,

For we never know all of the lives that we have reached,

But we know YOU know for our record you do keep

And when the end does finally begin

We shall receive a great reward for what we’ve done.

We’ll receive a great reward for what we’ve done.

My friend, be encouraged to continue.  Only Heaven knows the impact of your journey.

Sisters and brothers, be continually blessed, and please (above all else) MAKE SURE YOU ARE READY TO MEET OUR SOON COMING KING. Maranatha!