The sound of harps, singers, flutes, and trumpets will never be heard in you again.. (Revelation 18:22)I just read of the death of Whitney Houston. She had, hands down, one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard in my life. She was a beautiful woman herself, loved by millions.
But she had a problem. She had let drugs, alcohol and their attendant problems take over her life. She was married to a man who enabled much of that and surrounded herself with people who not only allowed it, but encouraged it.
I am of the generation that lost several talented musicians and singers. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Mama Cass Elliot, Dennis Jones of the Beach Boys. Then later came people like Curt Cobain and it just seems to keep going.
From what I understand, Whitney Houston was from a church background, singing in the choir. So many young female singers today come from this background. And the maw of Hollywood and the entertainment industry takes them, chews them up and spits them out.
There is something about the call of music in a person’s life. I believe that music is a call from God to his praise and worship. When answered in him, the singer is happy and fulfilled. When answered in the world, the singer soon goes on a path of self-destruction.
It is astonishing to read of the personal lives of singers, the drugs, the sex, the debauchery – all in the name of music. And it doesn’t seem to matter whether it is rock and roll or country/western or rap or what. The end result is the same. The singer becomes a survivor of their own lives.
Not long ago I read of the lead singer for Three Dog Night, Chuck Negron, who was found on a street corner, strung out, painfully thin, just about dead. He was brought in to a Christian rehab center and saved from himself. And he is not alone in his predicament.
Mackenzie Phillips talks of her life in the world of drugs and how she and her father, Papa John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, would take drugs together, becoming so strung out that she has little or no memory of that period. And the list goes on.
My generation grew up thinking that was normal, that drugs were normal. I myself fell into the lifestyle as a young man, cramming anything I could get in my hand into my mouth. For so many of my age group, it became an obsession.
And we suffered for it. No, there were no lasting effects of LSD and other drugs like the doomsayers predicted with deformed children and flashbacks thirty years later. But neither was there any glory, neither was there any power or praise in it. It was worthless.
And their deaths were worthless, just as Whitney Houston’s death was worthless. The majestic voice that God bestowed on her is quiet forever.
And for what? Drugs? They are trash. She lost her life for trash. So many lost their lives for trash. And tonight I am weeping.
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