Farewell, Kobe Bryant

Photo by Mike Von on Unsplash

I never cry when a celebrity dies. I didn't really know them and I'm aware that the way I think I knew them isn't real, only manufactured; increasingly so in these social media days.

However, yesterday, January 26th, 2020, Kobe Bryant died and I shed a few tears.

Kobe was my favorite athlete in any sport, not because he was the best of all time but because of the way he approached the game. He worked with a focused intensity that must necessarily lead to greatness. He resisted normality and pursued that greatness with the kind of obsession that that I've always admired when I find it in a person.

My admiration for him only grew after his basketball career ended. He took that same focus and intensity and applied it to what was next in his life. Therefore, as a storyteller, a coach, a family man, an investor, he applied the same intensity that was present with him on the basketball court. So I shed a tear because we won't be able to see what would come of such a life.

I also shed a tear when it was revealed that his daughter was on the helicopter with him, along with several others. It shouldn't be this way.

Death is such a wicked thing. It is such an affront against God who created all things. It's such a damned ugly thing and I long for the day it is finally destroyed and mocked for thinking it had ultimate power. God did not create in order for his creation to be mutilated by death, and death will pay the price for that.

But for now we all have to feel its sting.

I remember seeing the sting of death on my wife's face when her grandpa died. Then I felt it when my father dad. Again I felt it when my brother Shadrach died. As a pastor I witness it with every funeral that I preside over. And every time deaths sting is present I remind myself that it shall not have the final say; God will.

One day death will be dragged through the street and mocked. The chief mockers will be all of those who death thought it was victorious over. Jesus Christ will be the leader of that parade. He has already conquered death and because of him we will, too.

Until then we feel the sting... we suffer, we cry, and we feel melancholy. But while doing those things I look forward to that day when the great reversal takes place.

Farewell to Kobe and all those who lost their lives in that horrible accident.