Mrs. Hanover, my violin teacher, was very popular, had taught for many years, with a waiting list for students, and had many students who had gone on to music careers. I was one of her few adult students. One day she met me at the door , upset and fuming. She had just received a call from the high school orchestra director, complaining that her students didn’t know how to sit in orchestra. He claimed that, though they were all good violinists, none of them were familiar with playing from a sitting position, and that it was all her fault.

It was true that I always stood for my lesson, and I assumed that all her other students did also. I agreed that the orchestra director might consider that it was his job to teach the sitting skills of his orchestra, but my teacher’s feelings were hurt and she felt that her stature as a qualified instructor was being challenged.

“You know , Prue, that I don’t teach ‘sitting’. I teach the violin!” she said. I agreed entirely, and thought there must be more to the director’s complaint, as he had had her students in his orchestra before this. I wondered if we would all be taking our lessons sitting down from then on.

I was wrong to wonder. My teacher never changed her style. She never wavered, and eventually the director stopped contacting her about the need for her to teach “sitting posture”.

“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out.” (Luke 14:34, 35)

Mrs. Hanover may have had “tunnel vision”, but her “tunnel” was full of pure, effective instruction. She understood her students and consistently went the extra mile to help them in their progress. If she had allowed another “voice” into her teaching, she knew that it would dilute her lessons. She was unwilling to lose her saltiness to something outside the lesson.

“And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”(Luke 14:27)

My teacher’s discipline was strict, but I and many others were enriched by her teaching. She knew that the rewards of the discipline far outstripped the disadvantages. She knew, too, that not everyone would master the violin, but some would, and many did. “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”

Love in Him,

Prue