I was brought to tears by this John Williams arrangement played at the inauguration today. Simply outstanding.
And an outstanding prayer by Pastor Rick Warren. Note, especially, the names of Jesus at the end—including the Jewish name for Jesus and the Arabic name for Jesus. Kudos, Rick Warren. Outstanding job!
Thank you for posting this! What a treat.
ReplyDeleteExcellent! Probably my favorite composer is John Williams. Yo Yo Ma and Yitzahk(?) Perlmann(?) were wonderful.
ReplyDeleteDid you see the pianist got to wear her fingerless gloves, but the others got to brave the cold without anything? I have the utmost respect for their talent.
I didn't listen to the inauguration, but this is a wonderful reminder of the vast diversity of talent and giftings we have among the people of the USA. Talent is across the globe, I'm absolutely positive, but in a free country, where we have opportunities for so many, it's great to see it showcased. It reminded me also that we are a melting pot, too.
Thanks for posting this.
I just listened to the prayer by Rick Warren, and I was impressed and "amen'd" to the things he prayed. It seemed to be even better than others I've heard from other inaugural prayers (if I'm remembering correctly). The personal testimony toward Jesus Christ at the end was important to me in a national, public prayer.
ReplyDeleteI've heard alot of warnings about Rick Warren's messages or alliances or whatever, and I haven't really heard much recently. The mega churches are really frowned upon by some people I used to go to church with (and especially against RW's church), but the funny thing is, the leader of my former church and his family have a huge following inside the congregation as well as on their conference circuit.
What I'm getting at is, I think that for all the bad I've heard about Rick Warren, this prayer seemed respectful yet hit on the many points you would want to as a public prayer and testimony for Jesus Christ, to a nation of many, many faiths and others who haven't claimed any faith. It leaves no question to who he's praying to.
I did notice the fingerless gloves and thought it was probably a wise choice. It has been majorly cold here.
ReplyDeleteI loved watching Yo-Yo Ma's facial expressions. And I love the fact that this quartet contained all American citizens, some native, some naturlized. I love this country and seeing these amazing talents playing together as a group made my heart swell with patriotic pride.
Regarding Rick Warren - there are myriad reasons that people don't like Rick Warren. I think the main one is jealousy. If you listen carefully to folks who speak against him, you'll find common themes surrounding the size of the membership roles there.
Warren is a bible-believer and he is a relatively conservative theologian in the Evangelical tradition. But he has broken with some of the conservative modes of thought about how church should be done. I agree with some of the complaints against the way Warren does things at his church, but most of the complaints assume things about Warren's motives that I think are unfair, especially since he repudiates such motives in his Purpose Driven Church.
There were similar complaints against Billy Graham when he was the leading Evangelical too. And most of the current crop of complaints come from the same quarters--Fundamentalists. So keep quite a few grains of salt around for when you hear those complaints.
I'd recommend that we compare all people to what we see in scripture (not our personal preferences or our cultural or ecclesiastical traditions) and try to emphasize the areas where each person is following scripture. And if we see any problems large enough to address, we need to address it first with that person, not with our congregation when that person is not there to explain or defend himself.