You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.--Revelation 3:17
A woman died today, one who had money, fame and good looks. She had everything—and nothing. Here was a woman who seemed to go every which way in her public and private lives to gain “love” but it seemed to elude her nonetheless.
1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.--1 Corinthians 13:1-3
The type of love discussed here is the agape sort: the “divine, unconditional, self-sacrificing, active, volitional, thoughtful love”--and the one person who probably loved her in this manner of his own volition died in September of 2006.
All her perceived blessings, listed above, could not bring her son Daniel back, so what good were they, really? And what did she have to cling to in her grief?
I’m betting that Ms. Smith recognized the magnitude of what she had really lost, but did not know how to get it again and did not realize that God had handed her a way of finding that sort of love again in the person of her newborn daughter.
Oh, I made fun of Anna Nicole Smith as much as the next person, but her death at a young age and under questionable circumstances is sobering—especially when viewed in the context of her crazy life. (For a contrasting example, last year’s death of the Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin—in September, coincidentally--was also sad, but uplifting in its way. Discerning onlookers observed that he had lived a fulfilling--if short--life, doing what he loved and, most importantly, surrounded by love of all three varieties.)
As St. Paul stated in a subsequent verse of the First Corinthians chapter quoted above, faith, hope and love are all that is the essence of a person, but love is the greatest of the three. (And what is a person who is missing one, two or all three of these, especially the greatest of them?)
In the rather disturbing comments section accompanying a Hot Air post on Ms. Smith’s death, one guest said something at the beginning of it which jarred me to the core: “Makes me wish I’d prayed for her.” (As I told Allahpundit in an email last week, the agape love part of Jesus Christ’s first sojourn here on Earth is something about which we Christians often forget.)
Anna Nicole Smith probably died in despair—"wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked" in the spiritual sense--and, likely, some out there are feeling a bit of Schadenfreude.
Not me. I wish I had prayed for her, too.
(Thanks to Dad and to Jill Scott)
