Mark Byron

Evening Musings

Whoever the nominee to replace Sandy Baby's going to be, they're not going to have it as hard as the incoming Iranian president, who's being accused of being a terrorist and hostage taker in his youth. Actually, Mohmoud Ahmadinejad reminds me more of Yakov Smirnov than a terrorist. Iran, what a country!

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I'm a bit too much of a musical old fogie to appreciate Live 8. I started tuning out of pop music about the time of Live Aid twenty years ago and am out of the loop for most of the performers. It's likely much ado about nothing, for I don't think this is going to get too many people to vote Democratic in order to get more African aid or get Republicans to goose their support for African aid.

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One music note that touched me more was news of Luther Vandross' death. That brought back the memory of a wedding reception for some Bible study friends of mine about four years ago this July. Eileen had joined the group in March and came as the "and guest;" the first time I had a date to bring to such an event.

I'm not a dancer. I was too shy to do any non-square-dancing before I came to the Lord and didn't have any social outlets (or interested females) to do so afterward (or before; Eileen was only my second significant romantic interest). However, they had a dance floor open at the reception. I remember dancing to two songs with Eileen; the first was a Sinatra song, The Way You Look Tonight, which had me strangly thinking back to the finale of Deep Space Nine, which used that as the theme song for that episode.

The second song was Vandross' Here and Now, "which has become a wedding staple" according to the CNN piece. About halfway through the song, I proceeded to cry like a baby on the dance floor, as the concept that I had a pretty young woman dancing with me and in love with me really hit me like a ton of bricks.

A year later, we were married; our third anniversary is coming up Wednesday. I still get a bit misty-eyed whenever Here and Now comes over the radio or PA.

Edifier du Jour-Psalm 124:1-6(ESV)

¹If it had not been the LORD who was on our side--
   let Israel now say--
²if it had not been the LORD who was on our side
   when people rose up against us,
³then they would have swallowed us up alive,
   when their anger was kindled against us;
⁴then the flood would have swept us away,
   the torrent would have gone over us;
⁵then over us would have gone
   the raging waters.

⁶Blessed be the LORD,
   who has not given us
   as prey to their teeth!

We can all thank God for things we've gotten through, even if it's only saving us from the Hell that we would deserve on our own.

       

Without Visions, the People Perish

Or at least they don't cook quite as well.

One of the bummers of moving was having to try and replace the Visions cookware that was broken in storage while we were at my folks. The stuff was nice, it was made out of some sort of glass-like ceramic, and it worked both in the microwave and on the stove-top. I had a pair of them while a grad student at Kent State and brought it into my marriage, using it just about every day.

We went to a number of department stores, including Bed Bath and Beyond (if Alton Brown uses it as his equipment central, they'd have to have it) and came up empty. Turns out Visions went the way of the dodo in the late 90s.

Bummer.

Canada Day Musings-Part II-The Roots of Canuck-Bashing

Bene comments that "If you read commentary/opinion from Fox, or Link Byfield you'd think this was the worst place on the planet to live." A slight exaggeration, Bene-Even then, Canada would have North Korea and Zimbabwe beat by a mile :-)

That's true, but that's assuming that all you heard about Canada is Bill O'Reily's latest rant. I can't vouch for Link Byfield, who at first glance seems to be a Canadian conservative curmudgeon that I've not heard of before today, but O'Reily does his share of Canada-bashing.

However, when American conservatives are anti-Canadian, they're anti-Liberal rather than anti-Canadian; they'd have no beef with Celine Dion or Wayne Gretzky. The same can be said of a lot of "anti-American" labels overseas where it's often more anti-Bush or anti-capitalism that's driving things.

I don't recall a lot of Canadian-bashing in the 80s when Mulroney was in power. We'd have the occasional flap over timber sales or a fisheries squabble, but things were rather smooth. We had conservatives in power on both sides of the 49th and things were OK.

We also didn't see a lot of Canadian-bashing in the 90s when liberals were in power in both places. Since Clinton and Chretien were on the same page on most international issues, American conservatives weren't going to fire too many shots north of the border save in 1993-94, when national health care was a live issue and Canada was a prime example of a "single-payer" system. They had bigger fish to fry in Bill and Hillary.

Canada Day Musings-Part I-Two Countries, One Culture

Bene's got a Canada Day post up and asks "if you are not from Canada, what do you appreciate about our country?" As one of the leading Canadophiles among American bloggers, I'll give that a shot.

I've got a bit of a history with Canada; with Ontario just next door to Michigan, we're neighbors. My general impression is that Ontario's not a heck of a lot different than Michigan. We have essentially the same climate and the same culture. As a hockey-playing part of the US, we share that unique Canadian obsession. Quebec and the Maritimes might be different kettles of fish, but I feel at home in Ontario.

I remember having to ask the Army recruiter (I had a brief stint in 1985-boot camp and me didn't mix well) when he asked if I had been to a foreign country, "Does Canada count?" To me, Canada's not a foreign country.  It's a different country, yes, but Anglophone Canadian culture isn't foreign to folks from Big Ten territory.

It has quirks, but no more than Texas or South Carolina does. Ontario and Michigan were part of The Foundry in The Nine Nations of North America, having more in common than they'd like to admit. When Detroit and Windsor combine the national holidays of the 1st and 4th into one big party, they're essentially noting that they're one culture separated by an international border.

Midday Musings

There's likely headed for early elections in Germany, where the ruling Social Democrats deliberately lost a confidence vote by abstaining. I'm still thinking through the strategy. The best that I can come up with is that they've lost the German senate, the Bundesrat, to the Christian Democrats; rather than fight out a cohabitation situation where they'd get partly to blame for changes, they'll let the Christian Democrats win, then take the blame for any austerity budget that comes through.

Angela Merkel is the CD's leader, poised to be a Teutonic Thatcher if she wins; she'd be the first female chancellor.

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July first marks the beginning of a new fiscal year in many places, including Minnesota. They're the Land of Ten-Thousand Lakes and No State Budget. The Democratic Senate and Republican House are at loggerheads and failed to pass a continuing resolution; that'll shut down the rest stops on the 4th of July weekend.

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There isn't a Fourth of July in Canada-they go straight from the third to the fifth.

However, they do celebrate Canada Day today. Being a Michigander, I'm used to hearing about the joint Canada Day-Independence Day celebrations that Detroit and Windsor team up for, turning the week into one big river party with lots of fireworks.

So, enjoy your day, my buddies to the north.

I'm not sure what I'm doing right, but I scored 16 out of 20 on this Canadian economic history quiz when the average Canuck only scored an eight. That might be due to being able to remember what names are Canadian (Eaton, Bombardier), a good general knowledge of history in general, and some memory of traveling to Ontario a few times.

One that called upon personal memory was on when the last time the Loonie was worth more than a US$. I could vaguely remember that it was at a premium when I was a kid in the 70s and at a discount since then; thus, I was able to pick 1977 as the answer. Other times, it was the process of elimination. One question on a failed luxury car plant in New Brunswick hinged on knowing that DeLorean had his plant in Ireland; that would have been the default choice otherwise.

War of the Worlds, Beltway Style

Are you ready for the no-holds-barred political brawl of the century? Well, the century's still young, but what we'll see in the next few months is going to be a real donnybrook.

Sandra Day O'Connor's just tendered her resignation.

People were gearing up for a Rehnquist replacement, but he's yet to say anything. This is different, since replacing Rehnquist with a conservative wouldn't mean that much of a difference in how the court votes. Replacing O'Connor with a conservative would mean the 5-4 center-left majority cases with her voting with the liberals would become 5-4 center-right cases, unless Kennedy were to be pried loose with some less-liberal rhetoric.

That's why this will be the political brawl of the young century. What may wind up happening in Washington is one of two things. The first is that the Bush team might send out feelers to the not-so-Magnificent Seven Democrats and see which folks would be acceptable to them. The second is that the Bush team might send out feelers to the not-so-Magnificent Seven Republicans and see who they'd be willing to go nuclear for.

One rumor going around is that a Republican senator might be the replacement.

Regardless of who the nominee is, we'll see a new standard set for advertisement for a judicial pick. We've not had [had a tendancy to avoid] a conservative nominee to the court since Bork (Kennedy and Souter are there due to the Bork flap)  and we'll likely see quite a bit of borking from the Soros Brigades. We've already seen conservative groups on the air even prior to a retirement announcement; the liberals will be quick to follow.

[Update 7/2 6:45AM- Joel Thomas reminds me that I had a brain burp on his black-sheep brother Clarence; however, the initial responce to Bork's borking was to run up stealthy moderates]

As the folks over at Centerfield put it, "Buckle your seat belts, a bumpy ride is about to get underway."

Edifier du Jour-Psalm 123:1-4(ESV)

¹To you I lift up my eyes,
   O you who are enthroned in the heavens!
²Behold, as the eyes of servants
   look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maidservant
   to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the LORD our God,
   till he has mercy upon us.

³Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us,
   for we have had more than enough of contempt.
⁴Our soul has had more than enough
   of the scorn of those who are at ease,
   of the contempt of the proud.

The theme of last Sunday's sermon was on patience; the psalmist is a good example of that. He's waiting until his Master gives him what he wants; mercy.

Do we have the patience to wait at God's feet as long as it takes? Can we really afford not to?

I've been going through a rough stretch, and this passage hits home. I don't wait upon the Lord anywhere near enough. I might write off a decent little devotional each morning, but my prayer life is still very much a work in progress.

Part of it is a bit of an ADD streak, where my mind's hyperactive and doesn't want to sit still. I'm not alone there. For most people, especially go-go Americans, sitting still and listening for God isn't easy.

However, another part is pride; we don't want to be in hock to God any more than we are. In church on Wednesday, I was given a counter to that; we're already in hock more than we can repay for what Jesus did for us on Golgotha. Tacking on a bit more to the tab won't make a difference, since God's not expecting a full repayment.

However, the bigger counter is that God's got a surplus of mercy; he's looking to give it away, not sell it. The economics of God isn't like that of man; we work in scarcity, while God works with infinite abundance.

Morning Musings

Spain and Canada have pulled the trigger on same-sex marriage. Both votes were expected, but the new Spanish government seems to be making up for lost time in passing stuff designed to tick off the Catholic Church.

Unlike most of the Anglospherian left, the Spanish left has an anti-clerical streak that goes back to the Spanish Civil War of the 30s, where the secular left and Franco's God-and-country conservatives had something of a literal Culture War. After this vote and votes on divorce and abortion, Franco's not only still dead, but doing about 12000 RPMs.

Now that they have power and the country is a bit more secularized, the Spanish government is pushing a secular leftist program to wipe out what's left of the Franco era.

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It's not often that a NDP-turned-Liberal politician can do American conservatives a favor, but health minister Ujjal Dosanjh is looking to clamp down on drug exports to the US. He's got the good progressive goal of looking after Canadian health, but he might actually aid American long term health as well, by allowing drug companies those relatively high prices to recover their R&D costs.

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I remember this bad Jewish-American joke

"I want to be where my people are!"
"You want to move to Israel?"
"No. I want to move to Palm Beach!"

That came to mind when I saw this piece on the IDF playing hardball with nationalistic Jewish protestors who had holed themselves up at the Palm Beach hotel in Gaza. It's good to see the Sharon government working towards a Gaza bugout.

Edifier du Jour-Psalm 122:1-2(ESV)

   

¹I was glad when they said to me,
   "Let us go to the house of the LORD!"
²Our feet have been standing
   within your gates, O Jerusalem!

Verse one is a common refrain in the modern church. However, that had a different meaning back in David's day; the temple in Jerusalem was the focal point of spiritual life.

Today, the focal point isn't a temple but a risen Savior. One of God's acts as Jesus was on the cross was to trash the old temple, ripping the curtain separating the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple in two. No longer was God directly approachable only by the high priest once a year; anyone who believed could enter in.

The spiritual protection signified by Jerusalem is now mobile, showing up wherever God's people are.

 

One Wrong Track, Multiple Right Tracks

One staple of national opinion polls is the "Is the country on the right track" question; I just stumbled into a Real Clear Politics page devoted to cataloging such polls.

Right now, the wrong-track answer seems to be winning; June polling seems to have the wrong-track getting about 60%.

The stock response to that seems to be "Oh, the President must be doing a bad job if 60% of us think we're on the wrong track." Not quite, since while there is but one wrong track (the one we're on), there are multiple "right tracks" that people would prefer.

While the majority of that 60% are likely left-of-center folks that would prefer Engineer  Kerry at the wheel, there are probably a good percentage that are critics from the right, who see increasing decadence and a legal and political system unwilling or unable to stop it. Some would like to head it towards Paleocon Junction (the paleocons would be ticked at gay marriage, Ten Commandment decisions and Iraq) and others into Wholesome Corners. It isn't a fair assumption that the right track is Peace and Justice Square.

What would be an interesting question for the wrong-trackers is to ask them what the right track would be.

Edifier du Jour-2 Kings 1:15-17(ESV)

¹⁵Then the angel of the LORD said to Elijah, "Go down with him; do not be afraid of him." So he arose and went down with him to the king ¹⁶and said to him, "Thus says the LORD, 'Because you have sent messengers to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron--is it because there is no God in Israel to inquire of his word?--therefore you shall not come down from the bed to which you have gone up, but you shall surely die.'"

¹⁷So he died according to the word of the LORD that Elijah had spoken. Jehoram became king in his place in the second year of Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, because Ahaziah had no son.

The people of Israel in that era had largely turned their backs on God to the point that He was merely part of their history and not alive in their daily lives. That might not be a unfair assessment of the US or other parts of the Anglosphere, that God is history.

I can see a modern-day prophet asking a similar question-"Is no god in America [or fill in your home country] to inquire of?" If I may borrow from Renfield in Love at First Bite, a good hunk of modern Anglospherian culture seems to be saying-"All those churches are dead. Don't you have something that alive and keeking?"

I can recall my late friend Dave's journey into paganism; to Dave, the God of the Bible had seemed to have closed up shop two millennia ago. For him, there was no "American god" to follow and he felt led to seek elsewhere. Dave went after some oddball Sumerian deities, while others today will gravitate to south and east Asian religions or  New Age concoctions based on those pantheistic eastern (or pagan European and African) faiths.

One of the major things that helped save me from getting sucked into that polytheism was that my dad had just come to the Lord himself and was hanging out in a Pentecostal circle where God's workshop was still very much alive and keeking.

Your church doesn't have to turn into a bunch of holy rollers for God to be active, but He needs to be part of the mix rather than just going through the motions; churches can get caught up in punching the time clock with their programs and their standard liturgy to make room for God's real presence and movement. They might have a lot of activity and mission statements that have a lot of nice "Christ-centered" and "Spirit-led" sayings in them, but wind up being program-centered and people-led.

A dry, spiritless and Spirit-less church will drive many folks away from the church and to less-savory alternatives. Like Dave, they'll be looking for wonder-working power elsewhere. We need to give God the room to provide that in the church.

 

       

Longitudinal Musings

It's the dog days of summer and we'll be in something of a natural news lull for a while. I've got a few random thoughts about where things are at.

Was Bolton a sacrificial lamb for the left? Just when we were all geared up for some nuclear action in the Senate, Bolton took a lot of the fire on the left and the Seven-and-Seven crew got a batch of judicial nominees past liberal fire. The problem is that Moloch may well be looking for another sacrifice shortly.

There is no traction for anyone on the GOP presidential side. Romney is getting flak from both left and right; that might stand him in good stead for 2006 in Mass. but not for 2008 nationwide.

My scary scenario is a bunch of 35% pluralities for Rudy if there are three or more plausible conservative candidates with hats in the ring. I'm not sure what the blogs can do about it, but if there was a consensus developed among the right-leaning punditry, that might help push that candidate out of the pack of a half-dozen plausible nominees.

Bush is getting trashed in the polls right now; this is a stretch of non-good news. We've got high oil prices, an autoboomer a week in Iraq, sniping over Social Security and judicial nominees and no good legislative sucesses to crow about. The summer's not a great time to be spending political capital, so this might be a stretch where Bush kicks back and takes a public-opinion hit, then going on a charm offensive when he needs to push some things through. Remember, he's never running for president again, unless it's president of the church board in Crawford sometime next decade.

Iraq's a long-haul item. The autoboomers win if we leave prematurely and we only win if we leave an Iraqi government that can fend for itself. Once such a government and security infrastructure is in place, we can gracefully bug out and the "insurgents" will have a lot of their recruiting tools taken away from them. However, it's going to take some time to do this; in the meantime, this sucks the energy of al Qaeda and it's fellow travellers into Iraq and away from other places, which is a good thing in and of itself.

Morning Musings

They had the funeral for Filipino Cardinal Jaime Sin today; I missed hearing about his death last week. When he first was appointed cardinal, the irresistible gag line of Cardinal Sin got whacked over and over. However, once the straight line wore out, he proved to be a good man to be in charge, lending moral support to the People Power rebellion that (more-or-less) peacefully kept Marcos from stealing an election from Cory Aquino.

His bad health kept him from making it to Rome for John Paul the Great's funeral and being a part of the College of Cardinals selection of Benedict 16. Now, he gets to rub shoulders with John Paul once again.

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Speaking of John Paul, they're officially kicking off the beatification process today. I've quipped that he and Roberto Clemente are a lot alike in that both had the five-year waiting period for the Hall of Fame waived. :-) 3000 hits (on the nose) was enough to get Clemente in; they've got to come up with two JPII miracles for him to be granted sainthood.

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The NBA draft's tonight. The Pistons could use some bench strength, but you're usually not going to get a world-beater at #26. You might get a good bench player, however. A swingman who can play the small forward position would be nice, as would one more big guy to replace Eldon Campbell.

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Soros to buy the Nationals? We're better off with him buying the Nationals than trying to buy the national government. Keep him distracted and happy and out of the 527 business, one can only hope.

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Scientology's always been at war with the shrinks; they just didn't have as much press about it as they're getting now. Scientology doesn't like the competition.

What is with this all-Cruise-all-the-time thing? I'm assuming that it's the War of the Worlds pub crawl, but the movie's going to be left out of the loop between Katie and all the spiritual battles. One can only hope that this gives them a bad rep after getting good subtle press from all those Scientologist actors and actresses.

Blemishes on the Body of Christ

As I write this, I'm reminded of the passage in The Screwtape Letters where Screwtape is recommending a trick for Wormwood to use on his "patient;" to get him to look at the motley assortment of humanity in the pews with him, and to associate them, warts and all, as "the Body of Christ." Not a pretty picture, especially if you've been hurt by the pettiness of your churchmates.

This David Heddle piece is bracing as I ponder changing churches. A lot of church-shopping is people looking for something. They can't define that something, but they're not getting it where they're at. In the past, it's either been good worship or good fellowship; there was a stretch in the late 90s where I wobbled between a Baptist church with a great young adult ministry but dry fundamentalist services and a Assembly of God church with the best two hours (or more, if Pastor Stocker was exceptionally long-winded) in town on Sunday morning but no good small group ministry (at the time, they've supposedly gotten the small group bug since then).

In this post yesterday, I mentioned the introvert-extrovert divide and mentioned how one pastor wanted me to spend less time on-line; those are two reasons for looking to move. A relative lack of fellowship was another; the makeup of the church has changed since we got married three years ago, and we had gotten spoiled by how close our home group was in Lakeland, meeting weekly on Thursday night and usually after church on Sunday for lunch as well.

A fourth reason is that I can see more opportunites to both grow in Christ personally and serve Christ elsewhere. [Update 9AM-One thing I need to remember is the "grass is always greener" meme; you don't see the internal personal dynamics and shortcomings of a new church right away.]

Edifier du Jour-Psalm 119:113-116(ESV)

¹¹³I hate the double-minded,
   but I love your law.
¹¹⁴You are my hiding place and my shield;
   I hope in your word.
¹¹⁵Depart from me, you evildoers,
   that I may keep the commandments of my God.
¹¹⁶Uphold me according to your promise, that I may live,
   and let me not be put to shame in my hope!

Keeping the commandments of God; isn't that a good theme for today?

Putting them up on the courthouse or the schoolhouse may be nice (but only in a historical display, please) , but actually abiding by them is even nicer. Might not posting them on our hearts be a better strategy for cultural renewal?

 

Evangelism for Introverts

No, this isn't a how-to post, it's going to be a cry from the heart wondering how to fit in as an introvert in a church that prides itself in extroverted evangelism. I'm not ragging on my old church. This is more of a rag on the capital-c Church, especially the evangelical variant that I've been a part of for just short of two decades; August will mark my 20th anniversary as a follower of Jesus as my Lord and Savior.

However, when I came to the Lord back in August of 1985, I was 24 going on 12 in my social skills; some middle-school era teasing combined with a tender heart had knocked me into a shell as a tween-ager. I've been improving in my ability to handle unstructured settings; I'm now 43 (44th birthday coming on 8/5) going on 23 and a awkward 23 at that.

That doesn't lend itself to go-getter extroverted evangelism. The extroverted pastor will give the call to go out and witness to the mailman and the grocery store clerk, but it runs into two roadblocks. The first is that working into casual conversation isn't easy for me. I'm good in structured settings like classes (where I can be a regular chatterbox), but unstructured settings are rather awkward for me.

Groking and Croaking

A lot of news and non-news out of the Supreme Court. I think the Free Press and the BBC got things right in leading with the Grokster decision, as opposed to just about everyone else who lead with the Ten Commandments cases. The 10C cases merely kept the awkward status quo, which is "Stand-alone, no; with other historical stuff, OK." How exactly you read that nuance into the First Amendment, I'm still figuring out, but that's how things tend to shake out.

The Grokster case lays out some new ground in copyright protection; if you're actively aiding in copyright violations, even if you're not doing the violationing yourself, you can get your butt sued by the copyright-holders. That's fairly simple to get your mind around; if I can borrow from Stranger in a Strange Land, I grok the Grokster decision, but and still working on groking the Ten Commandment decisions.

The 10C cases was interesting; the Kentucky cases were a O'Connor-left coalition, while the Texas case (where the 10C was in a historical setting) had the same lineup except that Breyer jumped over with Kennedy and the three conservatives.

The non-news is that no one's resigned as of yet. I forget where I read this, but one reason that Rehnquist isn't retiring is that it would take away is reason for living; most retired justices died shortly after retiring. I recall Bear Bryant fielding a retirement question, retorting that "I'd probably croak in a week if I ever quit coaching."  He exagerated just a bit; he managed to hang in there for five weeks before dying.

Edifier du Jour-Psalm 120:3-7(ESV)

³What shall be given to you,
   and what more shall be done to you,
   you deceitful tongue?
⁴A warrior's sharp arrows,
   with glowing coals of the broom tree!

⁵Woe to me, that I sojourn in Meshech,
   that I dwell among the tents of Kedar!
⁶Too long have I had my dwelling
   among those who hate peace.
⁷I am for peace,
   but when I speak, they are for war!

I'm wondering how to take this one; I'm sure that some in the left bleachers of the Peanut Gallery will take come comfort in this Psalm.

Should the right side of the bleachers be afflicted, though? A quick check of Meshech and Kedar would be interesting; this commenter says of Meshech that "In Ps. 120:5 the name occurs as simply a synonym for foreigners or barbarians" and that Kedar was "the name for the nomadic tribes of Arabs."

In days of yore, you'd see war for war's sake, where you'd see tribes fighting over honor, for land grabs, for booty (get your mind out of the gutter back there, I was taking the more traditional inanimate version) and for general dislike of each other. There were quite a few tribes that would fit that description of "hating peace," not unlike the Klingons, where the males get ornery after a long stretch of peace-time, lacking a good way of proving their warriorly worth.

The geopolitical side of me wants to say "we're past that," at least among the Anglospherian polities. There may be well-tooled military machines, but most military guys don't "hate peace" since their friends get killed in war.

However, there's a theological side of me that wants to say that modern man has sublimated that inner Klingon into everyday life; they don't like peace much in daily life and need to find warfare substitutes. Sports, for one, where teams can be a proxy for tribes. Business, where we see (at the high finance levels) hostile takeovers, poison pills and white knights. Or, check out the jerk fellow child of God drafting your back bumper after reluctantly pulling out of warp behind you; road rage is that inner Klingon with a steering wheel and some horsepower.

We can't do much about governmental affairs; those of us who veer into punditry are trying to win people over to our arguments, but we're not often going to turn the ship of state with a well-placed post.

However, was can help ourselves and others around us get better control of that inner Klingon that's looking for the next battle and get him to enjoy the peace that passes understanding. It is a good day to die... to oneself, and let the peace of God live in us.

Edifier du Jour-Isaiah 6:1-4(ESV)

¹In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. ²Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. ³And one called to another and said:

"Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!"

⁴And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.

It was an interesting that I had both read this post on Isaiah 6 (hat tip to Richard Hall) and had an Isaiah 6-based song in our service today; we went to a different church than normal (more on that later) and this was a bit more intense and worshipful than normal.

The tongue-in-cheek commentary on the above post was a funny dig at non-Pomos.-

‘Woe to me!’, I cried, ‘For it looks like I’ve come to the wrong morning service.

For a start, I’m not really into seraphs. I know some people like them, and it’s important that we still do hold seraph-based services, but they don’t do much for me. All that flying about is rather distracting, actually – particularly when I’m trying to worship.

And as for that song they keep on singing: typical – ‘Holy, holy, holy’ – why do they have to keep repeating the words – we all know what holy means – sing it once that’s enough – and as for the old-fashioned language of the song – who in today’s world knows what ‘Almighty’ means?

And then there’s the smoke – don’t get me started on the smoke. If I wanted smoke with my worship then I’d have gone to the place down the road – how can I be expected to sing and pray with all that smoke in the air? I wish they’d warned us.

I'm not quite down with the smoke either, but we'll likely be doing something different than verses 1,2 and 5 of hymn #239 when we see the Lord face-to-face. We'll also likely be doing something different than five modern praise songs with the two uptempo ones to start and two quiet, worshipful ones at the end.

As much as modernists and post-modernists would like to replicate something more like our seraphs here, we're not going to get there this side of heaven. We can get something somewhat more worshipful (yes, that's according to taste; there are a lot of moving hymns) but the real heavenly host will be far different.  Not only will it be more wonderful than we imagine, it will be more wonderful that we can imagine.

However, we still need to strive to get that sense of awe at the grandeur and holiness of God, and a good music set can help. I can't speak for the incense/smoke, but if it helps you reach God a bit better, more power to you.