Donald Miller: Inauguration post

I finally got around to reading Donald Miller's post on him attending the inauguration. Here are a couple of my favorite excepts:

"And then we stood. We stood for about three hours there at the gate, slowly sensing the light grow on the horizon, then break and climb through the stubby buildings of the D.C. skyline. And hundreds of people came behind us, then thousands, then what seemed like hundreds of thousands. Jeremy and I were ten feet from an entry gate and the line behind us went, perhaps, three miles around corners, across streets and back toward the White House. It was very cold. My fingers were so numb I couldn’t twitter. (Did I just type that?) People in line started singing songs, then doing sets of jumping jacks (sets of 44). And again there was a strong feeling of joy. It was a delightful metaphor for heaven, I think, waiting at a gate with every nationality, singing, sensing a change, hoping in a moment things might be different."

"Then Wendell said something I thought might have captured the emotion of nearly 1-million African Americans on the Capitol Mall the previous morning.
"Don, did you stay for the National Anthem, after the poem, after the prayer?"
"I did." I told him.
"You know what, man. I’ve always thought I was patriotic. I mean I have flags and love America and all that. But me and this lady next to me, we just stood there and cried, you know, cause all my life, and I realized it at that moment, but all my life the National Anthem had been their anthem. But it’s not their anthem anymore. It’s ours. It’s our anthem. It’s mine and yours." And even then Wendell started to choke up."

To read the rest click HERE, it's rather long but so worth it!