A few years ago, I went to a free outdoor concert. It wasn't any old concert. Van Cliburn was playing a Tchaikovsky concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra--Eugene Ormandy conducting. That kind of wonderful sound you get to hear live only a few times in one lifetime.

In front of me sat half a dozen teenagers. Eating popcorn. That kind of sound has been made pretty often in the history of the world. But not often with Eugene Ormandy conducting. They might as well have been listening to a player piano.

That event has become a metaphor for me of how we live in God's universe. With little wonder. Little respect. We might as well live in a human-made garbage dump for all we appreciate the beauty and wonder God has surrounded us with. We scarcely seem able to distinguish between the Rocky Mountains and a Formica kitchen.