As you may know, most Fridays that I blog, I like to talk about music. I had planned to share with you some new bands I'm discovering, but the King of Pop's sudden death yesterday changed that plan. Having grown up on Southern Gospel and Oldies, I wasn't too familiar with Michael Jackson outside of his role as the cute, cuddly kid in the Jackson Five. I loved their song, 'I'll Be There.' When I started ingesting more MTV and VH1 in my early teens, I learned to love 'Scream' and 'Black or White.' And of course, like anybody that likes good music, if 'Thriller,' 'Billy Jean,' 'Beat It,' or 'Bad' come on the radio, I turn it up. The closest I've ever been to Jackson is when my brother had a track meet at his high school in Gary. That's my claim to fame.
The response to Jackson's death has been diverse. Friends of facebook swing from 'I'm crying. I miss him.' to 'I'm glad the freak is dead. One less pedophile on the earth.' However you feel about Michael Jackson, the person or the music, you must admit two things: first, there are people who love him who are grieving (I'm talking about friends and family who actually knew him, and second, he was a great pop musician.
A third thing this makes me think of is the inevitability of death. I feel like tempering the media onslaught of Michael Jackson coverage (not to mention Farrah Fawcett) with a good dose of Ecclesiastes. Money, talent, pleasure, security, vocation, acheivement - all of these things end up being meaningless when compared to a living faith in a living God. Others have made quick judgments on the state of Jackson's sole, quipping about the King of Pop meeting the King of Kings. I'll save my words on that one. The fact that arguably two of the greatest pop icons of the 1970s and 1980s died in the same week should cause us pause. And as we pause, maybe we should not be too quick with words or thoughts - as we consider lives ended and our own fading lives. As the first two verses in Ecclesiastes chapter 5 put it...
Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong.
Do not be quick with your mouth,
do not be hasty in your heart
to utter anything before God.
God is in heaven
and you are on earth,
so let your words be few.
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