What's on my mind tonight

So, Michael Jackson died. In case you haven't heard. But I'm not sure how you couldn't have heard about that by now. It's been on every TV station, and today as I was driving and listening to the radio, every break between songs the DJ talked about it. I think MTV even preempted their regularly scheduled programming to run a program about him. American Idol is going to re-air an episode for the first time, and it's going to be the one from this season where they all sang Michael Jackson songs. So I'm not sure how anyone could have gone this long without knowing something about Michael Jackson being dead.

And I get it. He's famous. He sang songs and made good music and cool videos. He did some pretty sweet dance moves and wore a sparkly glove. He lived at a fun park and had a pet chimpanzee and was friends with Emmanuel Lewis and Macaulay Culkin. I understand that.

But he was a person. No better or more important or any more special than anyone else. He wasn't any more special than one of my church members who I just found out died today in a car accident. His family mourns his loss. His wife and children and grandchildren now have a very big hole where this important and special man once was.

I just think it's wrong to lift up the death of some people as more important, more worthy of attention than others. We are all children of God, equally loved and cherished by God. It doesn't matter if we had best selling albums, or if we were on posters on every boy's room in the 1970's or if we were on one of the best late night talk shows, or if we lived in a small house in rural Minnesota. We are all special. We are all equal. We are all loved.