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Tonight I wound up on YouTube looking up a band called Glass Harp because I had forgotten that Phil Keaggy first came to wider attention there before becoming known on his own.
The song was Never Is a Long Time, and it quickly became one of those reminders that some musicians do things with an instrument that separate them from almost everybody else. It was a very cool jam, and before long I found myself watching his hands.
That is when something I’ve known for years landed differently tonight.
Phil Keaggy lost most of the middle finger on his right hand when he was four years old. He was helping near a water pump when his finger got caught in the mechanism. Doctors saved part of it, but most of the finger was gone.
And yet that same hand became part of why he is recognized as one of the finest guitarists in the world.
Not “good considering the injury.” Not “remarkable because he overcame something.” Just genuinely elite. Even great guitarists have spoken of him with admiration because they know what they are hearing.
I eventually got to see him in person a couple of times, including when he came to play at my church in Jacksonville back in the early 1990s. Seeing it live only reinforced what recordings already suggested: he really is one of the best guitarists in the world.
That makes the story striking, because a childhood injury that looked like it might permanently narrow his future somehow did not close the door everyone would have expected.
It also reminded me of Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians when the Lord told him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
That verse has often been misunderstood as if weakness itself were somehow desirable. It isn’t. Weakness is still weakness. Limitation is still limitation. But the point is that weakness does not automatically cancel usefulness.
Sometimes what looks like a disadvantage becomes the place where perseverance grows, where creativity deepens, and where dependence on God becomes more than theory. We tend to look at what is missing and assume the story has already been reduced—less ability, fewer options, lower ceilings. But sometimes what looks like a disadvantage simply forces a different road toward mastery.
Different does not always mean diminished.
Most people carry some version of that story—something that did not go as planned, something absent, something that seemed like it ought to close certain doors. Yet life keeps reminding us that the final word is rarely spoken that early. Sometimes what remains matters more than what was lost.
And sometimes what first appears to be weakness becomes part of what God uses most clearly.
