I was watching Dancing with the Stars last night with Karen. I don't mind the show. After all, there aren't that many shows with good looking women who don't wear much that my wife actually wants me to watch with her. I watched it with her last year, too (Go, Helio!). I'm not a Priscilla Presley fan at all (even though I like fans), but I couldn't help but let my mind wander (as I wander) to her past. I mean, what a woman! She was married to the greatest rock and roll icon the world has ever known to date. She had the man's child! When I visited Graceland with my wife, mom, aunt, and cousins, I was visiting Priscilla's house! That plane across the street, that was hers, too. The name Elvis is almost like Jesus in that you would just feel weird about naming your child that. It's like the name has been retired or something. The only Elvises I ever met were old and had the name well before the King had it.
Elvis's influence is unbelievable. If you were looking for it, you would see it everywhere, I'm sure. He was so influential that here we are, however many years later, and we're watching some woman dance on primetime television simply because she was married to him.
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The great modern theologian, George Strait, has a pretty stellar song out now called "I Saw God Today." I don't know that he's ever made a bad one (song that is [black gold, Texas Tea]). It's not hard to figure out: the speaker had let life pass him by, and he, for the first time, saw something that opened up a new world to him--the one where God is everywhere and in everything.
That's no new sentiment (Of course, there is nothing new--even pointing out the fact that there is nothing new is not new).
Quick trivia:
Who wrote the line "I find letters from God dropt in the street"?
[do do do do do do do, do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do, do do do do do do do] (Jeopardy!)
Let's see what you wagered . . . $10,000?! Now, let's see your answer . . . "Who was Walt Whitman?"
And that is correct!
Song of Myself! Some people try to say that God he was referencing was not the Christian God, and I say that's bullcrap. Half of the allusions in his work are Biblical! He knew exactly what he was saying. Just because he was gay didn't mean he was an atheist. His point in that line is amazing. I mean, what do you drop in the street? (Nothing, I hope, you litterbug, you [friendly punch to the chin]) But, seriously, we drop our trash and our surplus in the street. Stuff we have so much of that we don't think anything about dropping it. Litter is everywhere! Walt was saying that he saw God absolutely everywhere!
God's influence is everywhere. God created the world millions of years ago (or thousands, if that makes you feel better about yourself), and here we are discussing God however many years later. The Bible is filled with people who are only famous because they were associated with God. The book of Job shows God explaining his influence, and Paul told us in Romans that nature is dripping with evidence of God's existence and methods. God is so prevalent in this world, according to Paul, that we don't even need scripture to understand salvation or God's presence. That's rather extensive.
George Strait, Walt Whitman, and Paul all saw God everywhere.
You can, too.
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Next week: Part two of this discussion - "Sophie Neveu's Patriarch: The Realization of Our Spiritual Being"
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