The Hands That Stayed on the Keys

Margaret Ellington taught piano in her living room in Savannah for forty-one years. She never once slapped a student's hand for hitting a wrong note. Instead, when twelve-year-old David fumbled through a Chopin nocturne, Margaret would slide beside him on the bench, place her weathered hands over his, and guide his fingers to the right keys. "Feel that?" she'd whisper. "That's where your hand belongs."

She didn't just correct. She trained. She taught David's fingers to refuse the wrong keys and reach instinctively for the right ones. Not through punishment. Through patient, persistent presence.

Paul tells Titus that the grace of God has appeared — and that grace teaches us. Not scolds us. Not shames us. Teaches us. The Greek word is paideuousa — the way a parent trains a child, the way Margaret trained David's hands. Grace sits beside us on the bench of our daily lives and says, "Not that key — this one. Not ungodliness — self-control. Not worldly passions — uprightness."

The grace that saved us did not leave us to stumble through the music alone. It stays on the bench. It guides. It trains our hands, our habits, our hearts — until the melody of a godly life becomes something our fingers know by memory, right here in this present age.