Listening for the Bible

I had not truly opened my eyes and ears to look for the bible in the world around me until about a week ago.  I started keeping a memo on my Blackberry, and in two days I ended up with a list of over twenty references.  I suppose for now I'll just start at the top of the list.

The other day I was driving to campus listening to the new Kanye West album I had just downloaded, which by the way is incredibly self centered as expected.  A friend of mine told me a story about something Kanye West had said about the bible as well so I looked it up.  Apparently Kanye said "I changed the sound of music more than one time... For all those reasons, I'd be a part of the Bible.  I'm definitely in the history books already." ...Wow.  I think if Kanye West actually read some of the Bible he would realize exactly why he is not in it, but that's just judgmental me talking.  Anyway... Track 12 (an ironic track number if I do say so myself) entitled, "Who Will Survive in America" pulls from a work by Amiri Baraka.

"People don't even want to hear the preachers spill or squeal,
Because gods hoard has been thoroughly peaked
And America is now blood and tears instead of milk and honey"

More lyrics: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/k/kanye_west/#share

It was the 'milk and honey' line that initially caught my attention.  It reminded my of a failed vision of John Winthrop's, 'City on a Hill.'  Winthrop was a Puritan leader landing at Plymouth Rock, one of the first settlements in the future American colonies.  His sermon describing his hope for a new nation was originally drawn from Matthew 5:14 in which Jesus says to his followers, "You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden".

"and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey." (Exodus 3:8).

As religious as the Puritans were... and I don't doubt Winthrop's knowledge of Exodus among other books in the Bible, I wonder what it must have felt like for Winthrop to give that sermon.  It must have been a powerful moment for all who were present.  Considering the trials of the Puritans leading up to their voyage as well as the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, this reference to the chosen people being delivered out of Egypt must have been a poignant and moving experience... but perhaps I have a tendency to romanticize the past.