Anyone who yet doubts the reality of sin need only spend an afternoon along the Shenandoah River at Harpers Ferry.

On Saturday I took three of my grandchildren to show them the spectacular beauty of one of the loveliest and most historic rivers in America. It was everything I'd hoped it would be - majestic, accessible, offering wonderful rocks to climb and fascinating fauna to observe, and bristling with the currents of life and wonder.

It also offered an abundance of evidence of the sinfulness of humankind - broken bottles, beer cans, smashed styrofoam coolers, the remnants and wrappers of a fast-food meal, and assorted other kinds of human trash.

You have to be really dark in your soul and callous at heart to come to such a lovely place, the glory of God abounding on every hand, and do your best to make it another ugly tourist attraction. How hard can it be to carry your trash out with you rather than just smash the bottles, crush the cans, and scatter the paper around?

Littering might not seem like that big of a deal, but to litter in a place like this, in the very presence of glory and history, takes a pretty cold soul, one that simply can't think much past his own self-interest or entertainment and everybody else be damned.

All day long God reaches out to selfish human beings through the lines of creation: "Here I am; see my beauty, consider my wisdom and power, appreciate my steadfast love and faithfulness, know that My love for you is more than you will ever be able to return to Me."

And how do we respond? Broken bottles, nasty picnic sites, fast-food wrappers, and various and sundry other insults hurled in the face of our benevolent Creator and Lord.

Forgive us, Lord, for we are fools.

T. M. Moore