Dublin has a reputation as a venue for short city-breaks, but that usually involves couples getting away for a weekend… or groups of people going there for a stag or hen party… But this past week has seen two of the most prestigious flying visits to Dublin in a long, long time… First the momentous visit of the Queen last week, not only seeking to acknowledge a painful past but also endeavouring to point to a more positive partnership in the future… And then yesterday the President of the United States of America jetted in on Airforce One… And unlike the Queen or Prince Philip, when offered a pint of the black stuff he knocked it back (doubtless causing ecstacy among the advertising boys at St. James' Gate).
During the run up to his election the above song doing the rounds affirming that there’s no-one as Irish as Barack O’Bama, and I heard it yet again over the past few days. But I don’t think many people realised at the time that he does have significant roots in Moneygall, County Offaly. Some cynical commentators have suggested that he merely came here to boost his standing with Irish-Americans in the run up to a re-election campaign next year… It is a little ironic that Ireland enthusiastically affirmed him as a son of the sod… while there are still those across the Atlantic who refuse to accept that he was born on American soil and therefore can legitimately be President of the USA…
There have at times been criticisms of Obama's "messianic" status in some quarters, but regardless of that I was reminded in the build up to yesterday, that when Christ came into the world “he came unto his own but his own did not receive him.”
There were no state receptions, fanfares, or elaborate security precautions for him… He came, not as the head of an earthly empire, maintaining power by military might, but as the envoy of a coming heavenly kingdom, a kingdom of grace and peace.. giving up the riches of heaven to become an ordinary human being... Living our lives, and dying our death... Not seeking a lost apostrophe... But to seek and save the lost...
An adapted version of the "Just a Moment" I recorded for Downtown Radio yesterday morning...
During the run up to his election the above song doing the rounds affirming that there’s no-one as Irish as Barack O’Bama, and I heard it yet again over the past few days. But I don’t think many people realised at the time that he does have significant roots in Moneygall, County Offaly. Some cynical commentators have suggested that he merely came here to boost his standing with Irish-Americans in the run up to a re-election campaign next year… It is a little ironic that Ireland enthusiastically affirmed him as a son of the sod… while there are still those across the Atlantic who refuse to accept that he was born on American soil and therefore can legitimately be President of the USA…
There have at times been criticisms of Obama's "messianic" status in some quarters, but regardless of that I was reminded in the build up to yesterday, that when Christ came into the world “he came unto his own but his own did not receive him.”
There were no state receptions, fanfares, or elaborate security precautions for him… He came, not as the head of an earthly empire, maintaining power by military might, but as the envoy of a coming heavenly kingdom, a kingdom of grace and peace.. giving up the riches of heaven to become an ordinary human being... Living our lives, and dying our death... Not seeking a lost apostrophe... But to seek and save the lost...
An adapted version of the "Just a Moment" I recorded for Downtown Radio yesterday morning...
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