I was on a flight from Budapest to Frankfurt the other day and had a strange moment. I saw one of my boyhood rock-star heroes on my plane, he was old as trains. This man had been the lead singer of a couple of mega-huge rock bands in both the 70’s and 80’s. When I was about 16 I sat in the front row of a concert and watched him rock a humongous concert hall to the ground, he was a god in my eyes. I set my heart on being a guitar player in a band like the one he was fronting that night. It was something like a religious experience, the Birth of Cool.
Chronos has been unkind to this rock star. His band is no longer a big headliner band. They have fallen from favor and struggle to get attention from younger fans. He is now flying economy with his band and the road-crew as they left yet another small venue concert. Gone are the days of the private band jet he used to fly in. I was thinking how humbling it must be to go from being on the top and having a plane with your band’s name emblazoned on the tail to the tight, hard communal seating in class economy Lufthansa.
Sitting five rows ahead of me I could see the deep lines of age on his face and the reading glasses poised on the tip of his nose; he needed glasses to read the book he was focused on. His now colored and professionally highlighted hair looked brittle and had that quality of aged stiffness, why is it grey hair has such a thick viscosity? At one point he reached up to fluff his carefully coifed mane and I saw THEM… Liver spots on the backs of his hands - the Death of Cool. 
I am reminded of the words of the Apostle Peter, quoting the Prophet Isaiah:
"All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall. – 1 Peter 1:24
Like flowers illuminated by the noonday sun there is some glory in humankind, but it fades quickly and is gone. Life and human glory is fleeting, momentary. I just looked at the backs of my own hands, no liver spots, but these hands are not the hands of a teenager anymore.
Good news, a promise of the incorruptible renewing.
So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven. 1 Corinthians 15:42-49
More to come on this topic, we're shooting an upcoming Sacred Digital Video Podcast around this passage in an ancient crumbling graveyard.
So today I am thankful for a promise of a future in the land of eternal glory where liver spots are in very short supply and I am praying for my aging hero to know this promise personally. Who knows, maybe in the land called Eternity he can front MY band.
PS Thanks Allen Wan for bringing resurrection-life to my laptop and making the evil blue screen of death go away. I’m back online.
Comments (1)
No name to protect the innocent? ;^)
Posted by Paladin | August 5, 2006 5:06 AM
Posted on August 5, 2006 05:06