Hmm...

I took this post straight from my friend Lynn's blog (lynnslittlelessons.blogspot.com), but I located the video so that you could watch it as an illustration.

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Randy [Harris from ACU] then showed a video where Joshua Bell, a classical violinist, participated in a social experiment in January 2007. He positioned himself at the L'ENFANT PLAZA STATION which is part of the subway station in Washington and played some of the hardest classical pieces for 43 minutes.

Over 1,000 people passed by while he was playing and paid him no attention. These same people would have had to pay $100.00 for the cheapest seats to hear him in a concert, but they paid him no mind.

He had put out a case to collect money and had only raised $12.00 before a lady recognized him and gave him a $20.00. Here is what that lady had to say, "Joshua Bell was standing there playing at rush hour, and people were not stopping, and not even looking, and some were flipping quarters at him! Quarters! I wouldn't do that to anybody. I was thinking, Omigosh, what kind of a city do I live in that this could happen?"

Randy used this to further his point that we are surrounded by the presence of Jesus and do we take the time to notice it or not? As we rush about and scurry we may miss the Lord of Lords and King of Kings because He almost never appears the way we expect it?

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells what is going to happen at His second coming and what He will say to the sheep and the goats. Basically he either praises them or condemns them for the way they treated Him when He was poor, hungry, sick, thirsty, naked and in prison. Both groups question when they had seen Him at all, to which He replies "Inasmuch as ye did it(or did it not) to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me."

They had missed Jesus by not recognizing His presence in people.

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What an interesting illustration. In this time of hustle and bustle, are we slowing down to notice the people around us and see Jesus in others?