i have to restring my old guitar

I was just up on the pulpit playing my guitar with the local Christian station here in Lincoln blaring out in the auditorium. I really like to do that. I especially like playing the electric because it is easy to do so.

I need to do something to it. It is a cheap older First Act guitar that I bought from a kid for $20 because he needed the money. Now that I have given away all of my guitars except for the 12 string, it dawned on me that I didn’t have an electric. So I bought his, more as a favor than anything else.

It turned out to be a good playing guitar. It has an easy action and since I play it through the system here at church, I can modify the sound however I want.

But it is ugly, scarred up and such. Probably not real noticeable from a distance, but up close it is. Someone in the past tried to restain the neck and made a black mark over the First Act logo. I guess they wanted to pretend it was a more expensive guitar.

It is a classic shape, the old stratocaster, black with a natural neck, white fingernail guard. Or at least the neck was natural at some point in the past, I guess. Now it is like those antiqued pieces of furniture we used to do in the 70’s in tan.

So I guess I will take it home and restain it. The front of the body is scratched but lightly so it isn’t noticeable except up close.

But it plays so easily. You barely have to press down when you fret.

I have given away probably 10 guitars in the past few years and kind of wish I had a couple back. One of them was a bass, and while I gave it to a good cause, I miss it. It was an old Ibanez that played well. I even gave away a couple of amps, too.

While it makes me a wonderful person and there are stars in my crown, my wife points out that I don’t much to play on now. It is hard to play stars when you are leading praise and worship.

It was fun giving them away, but as she points out (nicely, of course) I am now faced with having to get something else. Of course, if I had them now, I would probably do the same. I like giving things away anyway. We made a concerted effort to reduce our possession footprint (I guess that would be a term) a year or so ago and we don’t have much now.

I even sold my library, some 800 or so books. I have a vestigial library now. My Greek and Hebrew stuff, some other stuff. I had quite a collection of old books, but they are gone too. Sold them all to a graduate student at a Christian University. I have to admit (and my wife does too) he got them at a steal because I am a natural born sucker.

Oh, well. I will restain the neck of my guitar and write some cool looking word at the top and the guitar will still play.

There is more to life than fancy guitars. There is coffee! Yes!