Grazing Grace

The Christmas Guitar

By: Greg A. Lane

In 2010, I began volunteering my services at an addiction recovery program for men. The program required that these men spend one year away from all their addictive influences at a halfway house in Huntsville, Alabama. Every Monday night, I loaded my guitar and Bible into my truck and made the forty-mile drive to the halfway house. Each night I visited, I would conduct a Bible study with the men and encourage them in their journey to sobriety. Before each Bible study, I’d lead the men in a time of inspirational singing as I played my guitar.

As the years went by, several of the men at the halfway house took a special interest in my guitar playing. Several of them told me of their desire to learn how to play the guitar. In 2014, there was one particular young man in the program who came up to me and asked, “When are you going to teach me how to play?” At first, I thought he was just making “small talk” with me, so I didn’t give it much thought. But, as the months progressed, he continued to plead with me to teach him. So, when I saw that he was truly sincere about learning to play, I agreed to teach him a little bit each week after the Bible study was over.

Now, the biggest obstacle to teaching him how to play the guitar was that he didn’t have a guitar of his own. So, I had to teach him on my guitar. It’s sort of difficult to show another person how to play a guitar if there aren’t two guitars in the room. I’d show him how to make a chord on my guitar, then hand the guitar to him, and he’d try to hold his fingers on the frets as I had shown him, but he’d forget the placement. So, I’d have to take the guitar back from him and show him again. We’d go back and forth like that frequently, so we didn’t get much accomplished since I only had a few minutes to teach him during each visit.

Well, one Monday night, just a little over a week before Christmas, the young man asked me to show him some more chord progressions on my guitar. I looked at him and said, “We’re gonna have to get you a guitar for these guitar lessons to be effective!” I told him that I’d be on the lookout for a good used guitar for him so he could continue to practice even when I wasn’t around. I said, “If you’re serious about this, you need to pray that I can find a good, cheap guitar for you somewhere.” He agreed to do so, and I packed up my guitar and headed out.

On my way home that night, I had to stop by a music store to pick up a new tuning key for my guitar. After paying for my merchandise, I decided to look around in the used guitar section to see if I could find one to buy for the young man at the halfway house. Since it was so close to Christmas, though, all of their used guitars were sold out. I was about to walk out of the store, but something inside me told me to inquire further. I asked the girl behind the counter, “Do you by chance have an old, used guitar hidden somewhere that you could sell to me pretty cheap?” She asked, “What do you need it for? Who will be playing it?” I told her about the young man at the halfway house who was recovering from drug addiction. She said, “We don’t have any in the store, but I personally have a good, old guitar at home that would be perfect for someone to learn on and practice on. It would be just right for this guy.” I asked, “So, how much do you want for it?” Her reply thrilled my soul. She said, “Oh, I’ll just give it to you for free. You see, I myself went through a drug recovery program just four years ago, and it changed my life. To give this guitar to this guy would be a way for me to ‘give back’ and help someone else out of the same mess I was once in.”

To me, it was a “Christmas Miracle!” Less than one hour earlier, I had told the young man, “You need to pray that I can find a good cheap guitar for you somewhere.” Those prayers were answered quickly! It wasn’t just “cheap” ... it was “free!” The details still needed to be ironed out, though, since the young lady lived in Huntsville and I lived in Hartselle. She agreed to bring the guitar with her to the music store on the next Monday (just four days before Christmas) so I could pick it up on my way to the Bible study.

Now, I had no idea what that used guitar looked like or sounded like. But, the way things had lined up and worked out so perfectly, it was obvious to see God’s fingerprints all over the situation. When I went to pick up the guitar that night, I was amazed at how beautiful the old guitar looked. It had a shiny, emerald green, rosewood top that looked practically new ... and it sounded fantastic!

I thanked the young lady for giving this beautiful gift to the young man she had never met before, and then I headed to the halfway house. Oh, that you could have seen the look on that young man’s face when I walked through the front door of the halfway house holding that guitar! As I handed it to him and wished him a Merry Christmas, he was thanking me over and over again, but I had to stop him. “I can’t take any credit for this,” I said. “You see this guitar is being given to you by a young lady who just four years ago was in the same situation you’re in right now. When I told her about you, she wanted to give this to you as her way of helping someone who’s in the same situation that she was in. Maybe four years from now you’ll be able to do the same thing for someone else.”

What a beautiful Christmas Guitar story that turned out to be!

That reminds me of another Christmas Guitar story that happened over four decades earlier for another young man who wanted to learn how to play the guitar. That young man woke up on Christmas morning 1978 to find a beautiful, classical guitar with a bow on it underneath the Christmas tree. That guitar became the young man’s constant companion. He learned to play it as he shut himself in his bedroom for hours at a time and diligently practiced week after week. When the young man became more adept at playing the guitar, his pastor asked him to lead the worship service at his home church. As the young man’s musical talents continued to develop, he was asked to play and sing at conferences and youth rallies. He would go on to lead worship services in congregations all across North Alabama. And, in the distant future, he would play his guitar at a drug recovery program for men, and would spark the musical interest of another young man who wanted to learn to play the guitar, just like he did.

So, you see, the beauty of the first Christmas Guitar story I told is overlapped by two other stories. Had a young lady with a used guitar not recovered from her drug addiction, this story would have never been told. Nor would it have ever happened had a young man not received his own Christmas Guitar four decades earlier, and surrendered the use of that guitar in service to his Lord. You just never know how the story of your life will influence the story of someone else’s life!

God is such an awesome conductor! He can use both our failures and our victories and blend them together into a beautiful story that will bring a blessing to other people’s lives. He is the One who orchestrated this story. You can trust Him to orchestrate the story of your life as well.