My first recollection of Whitney Houston is seeing her as a frequent cover girl on the cover of Seventeen magazine when I was in middle school and high school...she and Phoebe Cates (you really have to be a child of the 80s to remember her) were what every teenage girl wanted to be be...cute, well-dressed, and apparently always surrounded by lots of cute, well-dressed teenage boys...at least on the pages of Seventeen.
Then in 1985, we found out she could sing...like really sing...REALLY. I can remember having her first album, Whitney Houston, on cassette (ask your mother if you don't know what these are)and literally playing it until it broke...it was part of the soundtrack of my late teenage years.
Just as many singers today, Whitney first used her voice in her church. Her mother, Cissy Houston, is an incredible gospel/soul singer. If you have not heard her sing Take My Hand Precious Lord...you should.
Whitney Houston's recent death and incredible over exposure by the press made me think...if this were not Whitney Houston, would anyone care? Would she just be another obituary of a woman who allowed herself to become a slave to drugs and alcohol? Probably so. And that is indeed sad, as is her death. It is sad because she left behind a family who loves her and a teenage daughter that no longer has a mother. And it is sad for me as a fan of her music that I don't know where Whitney is spending her eternity. I know she knew the gospel, I have heard her sing it...I just don't know if she lived the gospel. Her lifestyle was not a vision of what a person who is living a life surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus Christ should look like.
Matthew 7.21 says, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,'will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." How many people cry out Lord, Lord, but do not have a relationship with the One to whom they cry? I dare to guess...a lot. Just because someone sits in a pew or sings in a choir does not mean they are a Christian. But for those of us who do know the one true and living God it is beyond important that we KNOW those around us. Not just who they cheer for on Saturday, what their favorite restaurant is, and where their kids go to school...but to really KNOW them and their spiritual condition.
