Honor to Whom Honor is Due

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Spoiler alert: Curmudgeon Sighting 

On Friday anyone connected to media (who isn’t?) heard that Betty White had passed away, less than three weeks short of her 100th birthday. People who never met the woman were posting links about it on Facebook, and I sat through two short retrospectives of her life. 

I am not sure if it was her age, her willingness to keep “performing” into her nineties (and being well paid for it) and relate to young people (by being *blue in her comedy, often). We do like to see people in their nineties defying stereotypes about aging, rather than succumbing to lethargy. Some are blessed with better genetics, of course. And she did almost make it to 100, which is not so rare any longer (They make up less than one percent of the US population, but that’s still a large number). And she was funny. I found these clips from her SNL appearance in 2013 funny. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbI1eJ_zAB8 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb4rS3VuB_8

I would probably agree little with her world view, but I do agree about Facebook.

And so, we spend 15 minutes on this and move on. We give her honor, because…. She made us laugh, I suppose. And she lived a long time and looked awfully good while doing it.

This morning in church we had our regular Lottie Moon video about evangelism in parts of South and Southeast Asia, especially during COVID. A family is there, working, living away from relatives and friends, faithful to a calling, a need, and a people group.

Missionaries are my favorite people, not because they are saints and have no problems or even are all likeable (although the ones I know are), but because they are real. They are, in their way, humble; yet, they are the experts in all this intercultural evangelism and global theology and such. They are the superheroes of the kingdom, but they live like Clark Kent and Peter Parker, if you will.

I don’t think there will very many YouTube videos honoring missionaries, though, or nurses and inner-city school teachers and those who serve the homeless. 

*blue here refers to sexual and bawdy comedy, not politics

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