What a crazy week…seems like celebrities are dropping like flies, and in a world where most people no longer have the generational memory of a death impacting our nation, such as the assassination of President Kennedy, it seems celebrity deaths hit those people harder. Such was the death of Michael Jackson, the so-called “King of Pop”.
I admit it – I was really in to Michael Jackson when I was a yoot (that’s ‘youth’, for those of you who haven’t seen My Cousin Vinny). I remember my first record purchase was “Off The Wall” (they’re like giant Cd’s to those who don’t know what a ‘record’ is), and I once spent my entire Christmas Eve listening non-stop to my brand new LP of “Thriller” (LP means “Long Play”, where big records played at 33 1/3 RPM and SP, “Short Play” records were at 45 RPM, or “45’s”) . You’d be hard pressed to find another performer who impacted Pop and R&B at the level he did.
But for all my interest and enjoyment of MJ in the days of “Thriller”, when MJ went off his rocker around the release of “Bad”, I lost interest in MJ. And I mourned his downward spiral in the media and the man he had become – lonely, depressed, and possibly much worse.
I watched the new channels’ coverage of his death last night, and was struck by some things:
- Tons of people holding some variation of a vigil, mostly at the hospital where he died or around his ’star’ on the walk of fame
- People making ‘altars’ with candles and flowers
- People in so much shock it was like they didn’t know where to turn and couldn’t believe MJ was dead
Interesting that the world paid so much attention to the King of Pop and openly mourned him, but the world paid so little attention to the King of Kings and laid him in a borrowed grave. Interesting that our world claims to be more and more secular and wants nothing to do with God but when a crisis of any magnitude hits, they collectively make ‘altars’, light candles and put out flowers. Interesting that the world doesn’t know where to turn when a life is lost, not knowing to turn to the Lord of Life.
If a person’s hope and joy was in the King of Pop, then there are no solid answers to bring hope when the King of Pop is gone. If a person’s hope and joy is in the King of Kings, Who announced His coming with a star, not on the walk of fame, but in the heavens itself, and Who rose from His borrowed grave 3 days later, then that’s the kind of hope that lasts. And that’s something to sing about.
Long live “The King!”