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| José Alberto "Pepe" Mujica Cordano, who served as the popular president of Uruguay from 2010-2015, drove this 1987 Volkswagen Beetle until his death in 2023. |
Being the head of one of the greatest of the world's 195 nations would be too small a position for Jesus to fill, but if he were our president he would certainly refuse the offer of a $200-400 million luxury mega-jet as his means of transportation. At the climax of his ministry he chose a lowly donkey to ride as he led an unarmed and celebratory parade into Jerusalem at the beginning of Passover Week nearly 2000 years ago.
Today U.S. Pentagon accepted Qatar's gift of a 13-year old Boeing 747 some have valued at $400 million for use as the president's private plane. It will cost taxpayers an estimated $1 billion to retrofit this luxury airliner to make it secure and suitable as the next Air Force One. And the cost of operating this "flying palace" will be around $25,000 per hour of flight, and the total annual cost to maintain and operate the plane will be some $37 million a year.
During the president's first term he described Qatar as "a funder of terrorism," but all that has changed with the prospect of a profitable and peaceable relationship with this oil rich country. And the gift of a luxury plane.
Meanwhile former vice-president Mike Pence and even many of his Republican peers question whether accepting this kind of gift is ethical and constitutional. But the president is insisting it would be stupid to say, "No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.”
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| "A free very expensive airplane" |
The devil took Jesus up on a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their grandeur, and said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.”
Then Jesus said to him, “Get away from here, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve.’ ”
Matthew 4:8-10 (MEV)
2 comments:
Reminds me always of the poem, "Ozymandias."
You made me curious about this ode to the decline and fall of mighty rulers. Here's the text:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart.[d] Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
— Percy Shelley, "Ozymandias", 1819 edition
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