Why I Love Coldplay

Maybe I have a very strange sense of humor, but I thought this Coldplay video was hilarious. My favorite parts: the first time the pyrotechnics explode, Chris Martin stage-diving, the helicopter, smashing speakers, and those awesome motorcycle stunts!

What a pagan king can teach you about the Messiah.

WARNING: 

Reading this blog post without a Bible in hand may prove bad for your health. Don’t do it.

Isaiah 45.1: “This is what the Lord says to his annointed [messiah], to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of…”

Anointing people for certain tasks was common to the Israelite of the Old Testament. To anoint someone with oil was symbolic of setting them apart for a special role with appropriate authorization. Priests were anointed with a very special sacred oil. Kings were anointed at their accession (or beforehand in some cases, like the wee lad David). Prophets were also regarded as anointed ones. The basic idea was that the anointed person was set aside and equipped by God and for God, so that what he did was in God’s name, with the help of God’s Spirit, under God’s protection and with God’s authority. 

Now reread Isaiah 41-45.

Are you surprised to see that God himself uses this term to describe the pagan king Cyrus, the newly rising hotshot of the Persian empire? 

Why does this matter? What’s so sweet about this that it would require such a boring blog post? Let me break it down for you in a 5-finger discount.

1) It was God who chose Cyrus and raised him up for the appointed task (41.2ff, 25). Because of this,

2) Cyrus’s accomplishments were really God’s, for it was God who was acting through him as his agent (44.28; 45.1-5).

3) Cyrus’s specific task was the redemption and restoration of Israel from the hands of their tormentors (44.28; 45.13) so that…

4) All Cyrus’s worldwide victories and dominion actually were for the purpose of delivering and establishing the people of God (41.2-4; 45.1-4). 

5) Beyond his own context, this pagan king’s work would ultimately be a step on the way to the extension of God’s salvation to the ends of the earth (45.21-25).

Sound familiar?

God’s Messiah, the Anointed One, would be God’s agent to deliver and restore Israel, not a pagan king like Cyrus, but a true Israelite, the true son of David, Jesus Christ. 

Ode to Joy [Burritos]

Sunday is the perfect day to eat a burrito. Trust me, I’ve been doing it for years. Since the earliest days of my childhood can I remember venturing out after church–my entire family like zombies lurching toward la hacienda–to enjoy the spoils of Mexican deliciousness. I say all this to say, today I am going to enjoy a fatty-fat Q’doba burrito. Here is my ode.

You can’t beat a good burrito.

You can include any type of meat, poultry or fish in a burrito–steak, pork, chicken, turkey, shrimp–and it always tastes delicious. If you’re a vegetarian, burritos are great meatless, too. Tofurritos!

Burritos have more vegetables than I eat in a typical day–lettuce, onions, tomato, sometimes corn. Isn’t cheese a veggie? I think so.

Not only do burritos come in a tasty tortilla pocket–the good ones also have rice and maybe even some taters for good measure. Carbotastic!

Then there is the cheese–who doesn’t like cheese? Oh my goodness, white queso. Not to mention the the sour cream. Dairy? Check.

Need more protein? Just pile on a handful or two of choice beanage. Black beans. Pinto beans. Refried beans. Do it up.

Then, to top it all off, there are the salsas. Hot salsas, mild salsas, green salsas, red salsas, corn salsas, guacs and pico. Mmm.

Burritos are clearly the champions of the food world. I defy anyone to make a case otherwise.

In the meantime, you know where to find me.

FOLLOW UP: Lunch was great. The sun was out. The burritos were huge. Thank you Tyler & Katherine, Jason, Clay & Christie, Armondo, Brooks & Allison, Jessica, and Q’doba.

The Collapsing Context of Community

Last November I had a conversation with a co-worker and what he had to say caused my mind to swell like a hot air balloon. He talked about cars (this was not something I would normally get excited about; however…). He wasn’t so much concerned about the bells and whistles and pistons and gears and whatnot. He had bigger things in mind, and what he began to share made me realize just how quickly the context of our lives has collapsed into itself.

Think of our ancestors. They inhabited a world completely other than the world we know today. And don’t think prehistoric ancestry. I’m not talking about the earliest ape-man on the evolutionary chart. Instead, think Great Grandpa (I apologize if Great Grandpa looked like the ape-man evolutionary chart guy). Think pre-scientific revolution, if you can. As science began to offer new explanations and technologies, we traded in the old contexts that informed us and bargained them away in turn for freedom, for liberation.

This is where cars come in.

Since the invention of the car human beings have not experienced such freedom of mobility. We can drive anywhere we can afford, whenever we want, and we can do this all by our lonesome. Eliminated the inconvenience of public transportation, cars drove families farther and farther and farther away. The car came at the cost of giving up the small, coherent physical communities they once depended upon.

It wasn’t just the car.

The invention of radio and television allowed the unlimited choices of a national or a global culture, but undermined the local life that had long persisted. What ever happened to the “neighborhood”?What ever happened to “visiting” your neighbors, friends, and family on a [near] nightly basis? NBC happened. CBS happened. ABC and Fox happened. “Freedom” comes with a price.

Whether all this was “good” or “bad” is an impossible question, and pointless. These changes came upon us like losing seasons for the Kansas City Royals. They were upon us before we could do anything about them. You can smash your radio and put your TV in the closet, but you still live in a TV saturated society. We live in a world that has welcomed these changes with open arms, and in the process we’ve traded the context of community for individual “freedom.”

Seeking individuality has reduced us to individuals–enabled, empowered, isolated, disconnected, individuals. In the search for freedom and liberation we wound up finding ourselves living lives without meaning, context, or community. Maybe that’s why Seinfeld resonated with our culture in such a profound way. A sitcom about nothing will inevitably resonate with a world that leaves us vulnerable to meaninglessness.

Divorced from the context of community, consumption is all that happens because there is nothing left that means anything.

And that’s pretty much all he had to say about cars.

Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is far more well known as a composer than a poet. But in fact he wrote some poetry, including this little ditty about pipe smoking.

Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker

Whene’re I take my pipe and stuff it
And smoke to pass the time away,
My thoughts as I sit there and puff it,
Dwell on a picture sad and grey:
It teaches me that very like
Am I myself unto my pipe.
Like me, this pipe so fragrant burning
Is made of naught but earth and clay;
To earth I too shall be returning.
It falls and, ere I’d think to say,
It breaks in two before my eyes;
In store for me a like fate lies.
No stain the pipe’s hue yet doth darken;
It remains white. Thus do I know
That when to death’s call I must harken
My body too, all pale will grow
To black beneath the sod ’twill turn.
Or when the pipe is fairly glowing,
Behold then, instantaniously,
The smoke off into thin air going,
Till naught but ash is left to see.
Man’s frame likewise away will burn
And unto dust his body turn.
How oft it happens when one’s smoking:
The stopper’s missing from the shelf,
And one goes with one’s finger poking
Into the bowl and burns oneself.
If in the pipe such pain doth dwell,
How hot must be the pains of Hell.
Thus o’er my pipe, in contemplation
Of such things, I can constantly
Indulge in fruitful meditation
And so, puffing contentedly,
On land, on sea, at home, abroad,
I smoke my pipe and worship God.

–Johann Sebastian Bach