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Joel 1:3

7Cubed

Music blog

Joel 1:3

SUBWAY FINDINGS

If you haven't heard the story of Joshua Bell in the subway, you need too.

The human mind can identify and quantify the very complexities that make our existence great. Terribly, though, we get into patterns of complacency. We tend to go about our lives in a ho hum fashion letting our minds get dumbed-down and desensitized. That is when we are in danger of not realizing our full potential and ignoring the true beauty that God has to offer us in this life.

When we heard this account of Joshua Bell we were dumbfounded. We didn't understand why so many missed the splendor that day in the subway. We will retell it for you...

It was in a cold DC metro station during January of 2007 that Joshua stood playing six Bach pieces on his violin in hopes that in the lunch hour traffic someone would stop to listen to him. In the first few minutes very few must have realized where the music was coming from. One woman threw a dollar bill tip down in front of him without even stopping. Some stopped but only for a moment as they rushed about their hurriedness... late for work no doubt.

Children who would stop to listen but their parents forced them to move on... too much to do. In that 45 minutes too many people passed without a notion of listening; only 7 stopped for a while. He earned $32 that day from 27 quick passersby.

Read more below...

When he stopped playing, no one noticed.

What no one knew was this... All but one person who recognized him, had missed a beautiful free concert by one of the most amazingly talented musicians in the world. The violin he played those glorious songs on was worth over $3 million. His concerts sell out around the world with the average ticket costing $100!

His parents bought him a violin at age 4 after noticing him plucking on rubber bands he had wrapped around his dresser drawers.

Woah! That would be like buying groceries from Einstein who calculates the entire order in his mind and when he hands the correct change the customer gives a grunted "Thanks" before rushing out of the store. That's missing the "awe".

It would also be like...

a group of religious leaders saying that certain carpenter was not worthy of being a world changer.

Yeah, sure he fed thousands with a few loaves of bread until they were no longer hungry; and yeah he turned water into wine; and oh, yeah, he raised people from the dead - but a carpenter?

So please don't miss the splendor and "awe"someness in your lives. The people you "run into" every day may just very well be there to bless you. Don't let complacency destroy your ability to recognize beauty even in the most unexpected places.

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This story was first told in April 2007 by Gene Weingarten after he enlisted Joshua Bell for this "experiment". This journalist's story won the Washington Post a Pulitzer prize.

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