Who died TODAY June 26, 2009

Ed McMahon. Neda Agha-Soltan. Farrah Fawcett. Michael Jackson.

 

  

  

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earlier this week, I was attending a conference and hadn’t been keeping up with the news when another attendee breezed by me casually mentioning, “Did you hear Ed McMahon died today?” Sad, I thought, but I’d heard the former Johnny Carson Tonight Show sidekick had been ill for a while. Hope he knew Jesus. After a few more days of media isolation, I “re-entered” to an ongoing stream of worldwide reports from Iran about the post-election protests there and the death of Neda Agha-Soltan. Tragic — and how many more are we unaware of, I reflected. The stories about this young woman reeled and re-reeled for hours with people from all political points of view positioning about her death until at last I thought, OK…enough. Then, yesterday, Farrah Fawcett lost her fight with cancer only to be overshadowed by the death of Michael Jackson. The woman whose look guided my 70s hair choices and whose posters sprawled my brothers’ walls had about 6 hours of media attention before the “King of Pop’s”  heart broke for the last time. Coverage of Michael Jackson’s death is pre-empting programming still — a full day after his passing. Today I’m wondering, whose grandparent, parent, sister, brother, friend has also died in relative obscurity. Famous or not, all of us are a blip on the radar of time. Which brings me to my point:

Who will die TODAY? — And, who will really live?

 

Want an adventure? Let me know what you think: Who do you know who is truly grieving for someone right now? How can you enter in to support them in this process? Why do people care about the “big names” mentioned here? What can we honestly learn from their lives? What does the media focus on each say about the health of our culture? — our world? Is the collective grieving process helpful or obsessive? How long will people talk about him or her? Really think: What what is the substance of his or her legacy? In light of that, are you really living?  Pray for God’s compassionate perspective to come into focus through these lives and deaths, as well as your own. Romans 6