The Cellist Who Only Asked for Rent

In the winter of 1991, a cellist named Margaret Kimura sat in her Chicago apartment with an eviction notice on the kitchen table. She had spent twenty years playing in church worship teams and teaching neighborhood kids for almost nothing. That night, she knelt on the cold linoleum and prayed the smallest prayer she could manage: "Lord, just help me make rent this month."

The next morning, a former student named David called. He was now a program director at a nonprofit. He didn't offer her rent money. He offered her a job — building a music education program for underserved youth on the South Side.

Margaret took it, expecting a handful of students. Within three years, over two hundred children were learning instruments. Within a decade, the program had expanded to four cities. Fourteen of her students earned college scholarships. Two became professional musicians. One started a music therapy clinic for veterans.

Margaret had knelt on that linoleum floor and asked the Almighty for four hundred dollars. God looked at her prayer the way an ocean looks at a thimble — not to mock it, but to overflow it.