I spent few days last week in
Washington, DC with our daughter Laureen and with some of her friends. I met
some beautiful people who love the Lord and serve Him "in the City". Andy,
Sunita, and Gabe were back in the States attending a family wedding in Michigan,
but they returned back to Cypress yesterday. Sunita will be traveling to
Lebanon with her work, this week. Tom and Jessie are traveling next week to
spend some time with Sunita and her family in Cypress. Praise the Lord for the
beautiful world the Lord has created. Praise the Lord for His church around the
corner and around the world. Indeed, "The kingdoms of this world are
become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever
and ever."
Pray for Laureen today as she will be ministering at "David's
Tent". David's Tent is a venue for singing, worship, prayer, and petition for
the 50 days leading up to the election. This tent of ministry is located near
The Washington Monument ,in our Nation's Capital. It is a 24/7 outreach of
intercession for our nation and its leaders. Pray for Laureen as she joins in
this important endeavor.
I would like to share with a very fascinating and provoking story that comes out
of Washington, DC, the epicenter of power, prestige, and possession. A Washington Post journalist by the name of Gene Weingarten
won the Pulitzer Prize a while ago for an article he wrote which he entitled,
"Pearls Before Breakfast." It was about a busker (street performer) playing a
violin at the top of the escalator outside the L'Enfant Station Plaza in
Washington, D.C. Hidden from view was a video camera set up to record the event,
and the busker played some of the most inspiring classical music ever
written. The commuters just walked on by and, by and large, ignored
him.
The violinist was Joshua Bell, one
of the most famous violinists in the world. And the violin he was playing was a
Stradivarius, which had been built in 1713 by Antonio Stradivari. This one was
a combination of the finest spruce, maple, and willow, built to such perfection
that if you shaved off a millimeter of wood anywhere on that violin, it would
unbalance the sound. The violin had been purchased for a reported 3.5 million
dollars. Joshua Bell normally plays in the
great concert halls of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vienna, Prague, London, Paris,
New York, and (next month) Toronto. People pay a lot of money to go to hear him
play. He earns up to a thousand dollars a minute for his actual
playing.
On this particular morning he
walked into the exit of the L'Enfant Plaza Station, positioned himself against a
wall next to a trash basket. He was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved t-shirt, and a
baseball cap. He removed his violin from its case and placed the case open on
the ground in front of him, threw in some change to encourage donation, and he
began to play. Every time a train pulled into the station, people streamed out
of the subway. Joshua Bell played for 47 minutes; over a thousand people passed
him. Hardly anyone stopped to listen. There were one or two children being
brought by a parent or an adult and all the children, without exception, were
intrigued. They wanted to stop and see and the parent or guardian pulled them,
dragged them, and took them on to wherever they were heading. 27 people put
money into his violin case—it came to $31.21. Only one person recognized
him.
The Washington
Post placed a few reporters around the exit and they stopped some of the
folks coming out and they said, "We are doing an article on commuting—could we
have your telephone number; we would like to call you later in the day and ask a
few questions." They called them and asked them if they had seen anything
unusual at the station that morning. Most could not remember anything out of
the ordinary. Some mentioned the violinist. When the journalists told the
people they were talking to that this was Joshua Bell, one of the most famous
violinists in the world playing a Stradivarius that costs three and a half
million dollars, they were astounded. The Washington
Post mused about this in a very interesting article. They discussed the
following question: if a great musician plays great music but no one hears, is
he any good? They asked the questions: Is beauty measurable or is it merely an
opinion? Or is it colored by the state of mind of the observer at the time? Is
beauty a luxury? Is it largely irrelevant to the nitty-gritty of life? No one
expected a famous and proficient violinist to be playing a three and a half
million-dollar violin at that time of the morning at the exit of a station.
They didn't expect him so they didn't recognize him, so they didn't hear
him.
It is wonderful to know that the Lord God, the Emmanuel, is at
work in surrounding us with His eternal and divine music, fraught with blessings
upon blessings, grace upon grace. How often we miss it. How often we ignore
it. How often we are blind to it? How often we are deaf to its melodious
sonnet? May we pause and ponder today. May we take time tune our hearts and
lives towards Him
“Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every
common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The
rest sit round and pluck blackberries.” ― Elizabeth Barrett Browning
In Christ,
Brown
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