Updating once again from work

So I was thinking in the car yesterday afternoon as I drove home from work. I was listening to "Poor Wayfaring Stranger" again, and I was suddenly struck by the sheer amount of history there. That's a slave song. It sings about "no more cold, iron shackles on my feet." The really neat thing to me is that the song survived the slaves who sang it, who have gone on to freedom, and now it's part of a body of work (hymns) in which the writers are inherently equal. What a connection we Christians have with the past, and with so many different cultures and peoples. I don't think there's a single tradition that connects so many people in such a way. I mean, we sing songs that Martin Luther wrote. We sing five hundred-year-old songs, and when we sing them, somehow we join all the other people who have ever sung them. Christians are intimately connected, regardless of space, time, or culture. What a neat thing it is to be a part of that.