A Guitar Named "Gracia"

I suppose nobody would really want a guitar like ours. When I first picked it up in the church kitchen, the neck had been broken, apparently in a fall.

After Sunday dinner, my repair tools consisted of a towel, a drill and small bits, small nails, generous amounts of white glue and string to bind the neck while the repair work dried. It most certainly it wasn’t luthier’s work. More like toy repairs I’ve done for our kids.

Unwinding the string as you’d unwrap Lazarus from his grave clothes, I took the guitar, tuned it and plucked, then strummed the strings. The neck withstood the string tension.

It has since been tipped over twice, requiring further work. It has endured repairs, both emergency and experimental. It has been subjected to fret filing, with one unusually high fret being pulled and then reglued. It has met with both a professional luthier’s scowl and the oft’ practiced arpeggios of “Stairway to Heaven” by our teenaged son. Despite its limitations, it holds its own on single notes as well as power chords. Its action was changed, and needs further adjusting; it can still buzz on fret 4.

It's nobody's favorite.

The guitar is, in short, a “beater”. An Ebay seller would say it has “issues.” Maybe it was once an object of love (inside the soundhole is written “Felix”, alongside a small heart) but not by the time I got to it. The path to the landfill seemed a certainty.

I don’t usually name guitars, even though B.B. King’s “Lucille” cries the blues and Clapton’s favorite, “Brownie” brought hundreds of thousands at Sothebys. Those guitars have something to offer. This is a “kitchen guitar” from the church kitchen at Iglesia de la Gracia. It has nothing to offer. Like me, this guitar has “issues.”

Not just a beater though, “Gracia” is my daily reminder of my daily need for God’s grace. It is “gracia” or grace that matters in life. Because none of us really has anything to offer. Nobody is buying a way to heaven: it’s all grace.

Grace is freely available, taking the beatings our better guitars would otherwise get. While the others lie in comfort, encased and insulated from mishap, Grace faces it all: arid climate, anyone’s song(?!) and fingers with maybe a bit of car engine grime still under the nails, not to mention constant tension on the strings. Yes, life’s constant tensions.

The definition of grace: to receive with empty hand what Someone else has earned. The test –and great virtue – of grace: to be beat, to endure much, and to still be able to offer a song.
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Gracia Gets New Tuners