{"id":3858,"date":"2024-07-24T09:10:13","date_gmt":"2024-07-24T13:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=3858"},"modified":"2024-07-24T09:10:13","modified_gmt":"2024-07-24T13:10:13","slug":"most-high-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/24\/most-high-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Most High"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

Great cities should have an iconic centerpiece.

That, at least, was the thinking of the planning committee for the Paris Centennial in 1889 \u2013 a World\u2019s Fair that would coincide with the 100th<\/sup> anniversary of the French Revolution.

The planners were biased.\u00a0They wanted something really big<\/em>.\u00a0At that time the Washington Monument in D.C., standing at 500 feet or 152.4 meters, was the tallest human-crafted structure in the world.\u00a0What if Paris could become the home of a 200-meter free-standing engineering marvel?\u00a0No, it should be taller than that.\u00a0Why not shoot for 300 meters?\u00a0

The committee launched a competition for the most innovative design.\u00a0More than 100 entries were submitted.\u00a0

One of them proposed a guillotine taller than an 80-story building.\u00a0While that was horrifyingly effective in reminding people of the French Revolution, the committee wisely chose to go in a different direction.\u00a0

They picked instead the 324-meter (1,063 ft) iron tower proposed by the construction firm of Gustave Eiffel, an engineer already famous for crafting a number of spectacular bridges.\u00a0He had also designed the interior iron skeleton of the Statue of Liberty, France\u2019s gift of friendship to the United States three years earlier.\u00a0

From the start, there was outrage. The tower looked like an oil derrick in west Texas.\u00a0As social historian Bill Bryson explains in his book At Home<\/em>, \u201cThe Eiffel Tower wasn\u2019t just the largest thing that anyone had ever proposed to build, it was the largest completely useless thing.\u201d\u00a0It wasn\u2019t a museum, a mausoleum, a memorial, or a cathedral.\u00a0It was simply 9,500 tons of iron beams, with a restaurant, an observation deck, and an elevator thrown in.\u00a0

Dozens of Paris\u2019 most famous artists signed their names to a feverish petition:

We, writers, painters, sculptors, architects and passionate devotees of the hitherto untouched beauty of Paris, protest with all our strength, with all our indignation in the name of slighted French taste, against the erection \u2026 of this useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower \u2026 To bring our arguments home, imagine for a moment a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack, crushing under its barbaric bulk Notre Dame, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the Dome of les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, all of our humiliated monuments will disappear in this ghastly dream.<\/em>

A mathematician produced pages of calculations \u201cproving\u201d that the tower would fall down in a strong breeze.\u00a0

Gustave Eiffel calmly took it all in stride.\u00a0The tower was built in less than two years and came in well under budget (certainly atypical for a massive civic project).\u00a0More than 125 men helped maneuver its 18,000 intricately fitted parts, often at dizzying heights.\u00a0There was not a single casualty.\u00a0

Skeptics doubted that the four giant legs, each of which leans inward at an angle of 54 degrees, could ever be precisely aligned with the first platform, a giant slab of iron 180 feet above the ground.\u00a0But Eiffel made it happen.\u00a0

The results were breathtaking.\u00a0No one had ever been able to look down upon a major city from such a height.

The tower was supposed to stand for only 20 years.\u00a0But Parisians gradually came to appreciate it.\u00a0

Well, almost everyone.\u00a0The celebrated writer Guy de Maupassant is said to have eaten lunch in the tower\u2019s restaurant every day because it was the only place in the city where he didn\u2019t have to look at it.\u00a0

Indeed, Paris is now automatically associated with the tower, and the tower with the capital of France.\u00a0One of Hollywood\u2019s enduring conventions is that any scene purported to be in Paris simply has<\/em> to include a glimpse of Eiffel\u2019s most famous creation in the background. You may be certain that during the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad, which begin this week, the tower will be showcased from every possible angle.

As we\u2019ve noted in several recent reflections, things that are high have always fascinated human beings.\u00a0They are suggestive of power and transcendence.\u00a0

In Bible times altars were typically built on \u201chigh places.\u201d\u00a0Sacrifices were offered by high priests.\u00a0The devil tempted Jesus to leap from the highest point on the Temple Mount, because that would be spectacular. We speak today of high ideals and high achievers.\u00a0Politicians run for high office.\u00a0Even drug-taking is described as \u201cgetting high\u201d \u2013 an experience that makes us feel that at least for a moment we can exist on a higher plane.

At least 50 times in the Old Testament, however, God is described as the Most High. Note Psalm 47:2: \u201cFor the Lord Most High is to be feared, a great King over all the earth.\u201d

Note the superlative.\u00a0God isn\u2019t just somewhere up there <\/em>with other important realities.\u00a0He is the Most <\/em>High.\u00a0

So what does it mean to honor God as God?\u00a0

It means to do a fearless inventory of every single thing in my life to which I attribute value.

And then to live in such a way that I can say, with integrity, God tops this, too.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Great cities should have an iconic centerpiece. That, at least, was the thinking of the planning committee for the Paris Centennial in 1889 \u2013 a World\u2019s Fair that would coincide with the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. The planners were biased.\u00a0They wanted something really big.\u00a0At that time the Washington Monument… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3859,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[776,777],"class_list":["post-3858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-most-high","tag-superlatives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3858"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3860,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3858\/revisions\/3860"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}