The house had been bulldozed, burnt, and buried weeks ago, and I’d never noticed.

I drove past this home every time I went to our nearby town, and still I hadn’t realized it was gone.

The contractor’s progress in building a bigger, new house a few yards away had distracted me.  Am I like the proverbial ravens, attracted to shiny, new objects?

I try to pay attention to the old, the dying and dead,

but do I only notice the sparkling, the new, the contemporary?

Do I neglect to see the beauty and meaning in the small, the quiet, and the ordinary?  A new day’s light illuminating grassy seed heads dipped in dew is still a miracle.

The geometry spoken into the heart of a flower is no less perfect because the flower is called a weed.

Are things too small to merit my contemplation, like the millions of dust particles that turned the western sky into a burnished sunset?

Do I look, but do not see?  Is it a rebellious heart that overlooks the wondrous that surrounds me?

“Son of man, you are living among a rebellious people. They have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear, for they are a rebellious people.   Ezekiel 12:2   NIV

Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember?   Mark 8:18   NIV