My name is Jeremy, and I’m an egomaniac.

Let me explain. I spent this week in DC at the National Prayer Breakfast. It actually should be called the International Prayer Breakfast as it’s a gathering of people from all over the world in Jesus’s Name. I’ve had fascinating conversations about Jesus with people from a variety of nations and perspectives and will post some of my reflections on those conversations next week.

First, I want to write about an experience we had in DC before the event. On Tuesday we had the chance to take a tour of Air Force One. Like you, I had developed an idea of the plane from movies and TV shows. Seeing it up close (and of course sitting in President Obama’s chair) provided a surreal experience. There were many parts of the plane that blew me away, like the room set apart with three chairs for three medical professionals. This room can be quickly converted into a surgical room and comes with platelets for President Obama in case something serious happened to him while in air.

There were lots of aspects like this (did you know there are actually two planes?). But the one that stuck with me the most was the carpet. Air Force One has at least three distinct types of carpet on its floors. As you might imagine, this isn’t because they lacked funding to make it consistent. Rather, the carpet communicates the level of importance of that part of the plane. Each person on Air Force One has an assigned carpet level and can only walk on that level and back. Never forward. It starts with blue in the back and moves up to a gold-ish tan in the front for the President. Everything about this signaled a hierarchy. Prestige and power literally emanated from the ground up.

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