Playing for God
by Micah Watney, Arts Community Volunteer
Watch Micah's interview above, and read his article below.
Music is something that I grew up with for a large majority of my life. Choir, band, and piano were passions that brought me so much joy for years. However, after I graduated from college, moved to Kansas City, and started to fully pursue my career as a videographer, I never had many opportunities to share my love of music. I was no longer connected to many outlets for my love of music.
When the opportunity for me to teach keyboard at Mission Adelante for the Arts Community arose, it was never an outlet I expected would be presented to me. However, I felt an excitement to share in these gifts with those that feel the greatest joy: God’s Children.
From my time volunteering to teach these children for the past year and a half, there have been so many times I have been excited about how these children are not just growing in their skills, but becoming worshippers of God. Some of these moments include seeing their reaction when they finally get a piece finished, or when they themselves can hear just how far they’ve come.
One moment, in particular, stands out to me. This happened after I gave one of my students the song “Spring from ‘The Four Seasons’” by Vivaldi. It very soon became one of his favorites. Now, at the beginning of most of my classes, some of the kids typically like to mess around with some of the preprogrammed songs on the keyboard and pretend that they are playing the song. This one class started off the same way, however, as I was walking around, I heard this student playing the song I assigned to him. At first, I thought it was just another preprogrammed song, but as I observed more closely, I noticed that he was in fact playing the piece fully! And it sounded great! He was truly finding joy in the creation of music, and he was giving it his all. This moment cemented the idea to me that the good work we do in the arts is just as important to God as any other work. He was playing this for God.
