THOUGHTS ON THE DEATH OF MICHAEL JACKSON

John Piper put it well: Farrah Fawcett (62), Michael Jackson (50) and 150,000 others: "A flower of the field; the wind passes, and it is gone."

I was never a Michael Jackson fan, but I always admired his talent, and felt a sense of pity for him. His life seemed to be a constant battle for identity, which he tried to achieve by stripping himself of identity. Watch footage of his Jackson 5 days and there is an outrageously talented, happy-looking, black boy. Then fast forward a few years to images of Jackson looking troubled and sick, white, and without gender.

Jackson might have sold 750 million records, but being comfortable in his own skin would have been worth far more.

The vast majority of the tens of thousands who plunge off the cliff of this life every day are anonymous. Their passing affects only a small pool of humanity. Jackson’s death is a bigger ripple in the pond, and we can expect Diana-like outpourings of public grief, but it is the end to which we are all with certainty heading.

I recently heard a solicitor speaking about how people come to her to make wills saying, “if I die” when actually what they should be saying is “when I die.”

We all die, but we don’t want to die lost.

Where do you get your identity? Are you still searching for it – maybe not through extreme cosmetic surgery, but searching none the less. Or do you share the confidence of the Apostle John, that in Jesus, “We are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.”

That is hope for this life, and for the life to come.