the perfect pairing

Every Sunday morning I wake up early and go to work to get free coffee and spend some time reading. Ever since April I've been going through the books of N.T. Wright, and I'm currently reading through "What Saint Paul Really Said." I always look forward to Sunday mornings, and on days like this--when it's crisp and cool, not obstinately hot as one would assume August to be--it's even better. I sit down with four shots of espresso over ice with a bit of half-and-half and two splendas, and I just sit and read and relax. Really, nothing's better--and having N.T. Wright's wisdom and knowledge on the one hand and a cup of coffee on the other is really unparalleled in excitement. Here is something Wright wrote in the second-to-last chapter of the book I'm currently reading. As James Dunn said, even if you don't agree with Wright, you can't fail to be enlivened by him:

When we are truly announcing the lordship of Jesus, we must make it clear that, according to this gospel, the one true God has dealt in Jesus Christ with sin, death, guilt and shame, and now summons men and women everywhere to abandon the idols which hold them captive to these things and to discover a new life, and a new way of life, in him. But the gospel is not simply the offer of a new way of being religious. It is not the offer of a certain type of self-fulfillment, or a certain style of religious experience. It is not a take-it-or-leave-it thing, which suggests that people could try this thing on for size and only buy it if the mood takes them. The gospel is the royal announcement. No herald in the ancient world would say 'Tiberius Caesar has become emperor: accept him if it suits you!' The gospel does offer a new way of life, which will ultimately be the way of self-fulfillment. But first it offers the cross: the cross of Jesus, and the cross which the risen Lord offers his followers. The gospel is, then, the announcement about Jesus, not in itself the offer of a new experience. Whatever new experiences result from giving one's allegiance to Jesus are just that, a bunch of new experiences. The only experience guaranteed by Jesus' summons is that of carrying the cross. - N.T. Wright, "What Saint Paul Really Said", pp 157