For almost 9 months, my co-worker JT and I had been teaching a Nepali worship team each Saturday at our Proskuneo School of the Arts. It all started when the pastor of a local Nepali church brought 5 young people to me and said, “this is our worship team.” None of them knew how to play any instruments, but evidently they were willing. And, their church desperately needed musicians. So, it had been decided that this guy would play piano…this girl violin…and so on. And, JT and I were tasked with taking these 5 beginners and turning them into a team that could lead worship at church. It was slow going, but we were seeing progress.
One Saturday, the violin player was making more squeaky notes than normal. So, I went over to her and tried to figure out what was going on. When I played her violin myself, to demonstrate what it was supposed to sound like…it made the same squeaking/squawking sound. Ahhh. Rosin. A simple fix! The bow needs rosin. (Rosin is made from the sap of trees, and when rubbed on the bow hair of a violin, helps the bow to grab the string better.) I had talked to her about rosin once before and at that time, she had none. This time, when I mentioned it, her eyes lit up and she said she had some. I was thrilled to watch her take it out of her case. I took the rosin, opened it, and noticed that the rosin had never been used. I took a key and scratched the surface of the rosin and then began rubbing it on the bow. A snicker of laughter went through the room…
It turns out that someone had given her the rosin. But, she didn’t know how to use it, so she had been rubbing her bow hair on the wooden casing for the rosin, not realizing that she wasn’t doing anything of value.
What good is it to give someone rosin if they will just rub the hair of their bow on the wooden casing?
What good is it to give someone something if you are not willing to make sure they can actually use it?
[written by Josh Davis]