One whole year...

My wife and I celebrated our one year anniversiary yesterday. Wow. I am blessed beyond words. It is amazing how God can use people (like my wife) and situations (like our marriage-- I realize that "situation" is a bad word to use for marriage-- "sacred covenant" is a little more accurate, but you get my drift) to conform us to the likeness of His Son and bring glory to Himself. I've been listening to Piper's sermons on marriage lately (subscribe to His podcast by the way) and his sermons on marriage are basically filled with the same thing he says everywhere else (which, in all honesty, is the only thing worth saying)-- that Christ is to be exalted, that we are to glory in Him, that we are to exalt Him and in Him, that we are to surrender every ounce of our being to His purpose and pleasure. Piper made a simple comment in a sermon that has resonated in my heart the past few weeks: marriage was created to symbolize and glorify Christ and the church. Now, I think I've heard that somewhere before (see Ephesians 5), but it just hit me in a new way these last few weeks. Now, if my marriage is supposed to symbolize Christ and the church, which one does that make me? Hear my heart on this, I'm not positing myself as a Christ-figure of course, but that it a pretty serious role, don't you think? That means I should be the pursuer, the lover, the defender, the protector-- and, most importantly, my wife should see Jesus in the way I treat her. A year in the books...and many more ahead (deo volente) with a high calling to respond to.

American Idol

God bless Sunjaya.

Go Melinda.

Props to Jordin because she's the hometowner.

That being said...

My wife and I had friends over last night who have little or no interest in American Idol so we ended up spending the evening on the patio enjoying a great meal and even better conversation-- a pretty lame evening compared to our normal Tuesday night: tuning in to see who sucked, who rocked, who dressed like a moron, who butchered a perfectly decent song, and how Sunjaya's hair looked...but that's beside the point.

A friend of mine made a comment yesterday that I thought was interesing. He said he thought American Idol was popular because it gives Americans the all-to-seldom opporunity to have a shared experience. It's "reality TV" (by the way, "reality TV" is neither actual reality nor actual TV-- put that in your book), so people don't feel like their watching characters develop (Gil Grissom, Ross and Rachel, Corporal Klinger, etc.), but we're watching REAL people develop-- with real feelilngs, and families, and fears. And, we're doing it together-- every warm-blooded American tunes in every Tuesday to see drunk Paula and Randy "The Dogg" Jackson and the drama that has become Ryan and Simon's relationship.

So, is that why it's so popular? Because it's a shared experience? Because we know that some 15 year old kid in Nashville and a retired couple in Daytona Beach and a drug slinger in LA are all watching and waiting to see who's booted and who stays?

And what's the big deal about a shared experience anyway? What does that matter?

And what was Sunjaya thinking with that weird mohawk thing?

Luke