Congratulations to Rick Pitino and the Louisville Cardinals on their NCAA Championship. As I was driving to work this morning, I was listening to the news as I always do, and heard that Pitino is slated to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. That’s a great honor.
I began to ponder this whole hall of fame concept. Who has halls of fame? Why do we elevate certain people, but not others to such a status? We seem to have the most halls of fame for people who entertain us. Sports figures have multiple halls of fame, one for each sport. Television, radio and movie entertainers have halls of fame. Musicians have halls of fame. There is the Walk of Fame in Hollywood. There are are Oscars, Grammys, Emmys, Tonys, and more.
The more I thought about this concept of fame, the more intrigued I became by it, and the more I wanted to dig into it. I found that there are other halls of fame, that are less well known. Many of these are tied to aviation and space exploration. While I’m very put off by the narcissism of the entertainment industry, I can accept the aviation and space halls of fame more easily.
There are some oddball halls of fame if you dig deeply enough. Carnegie Mellon University has established a Robot Hall of Fame. The University of Alabama has an Insurance Hall of Fame. Seriously!
Then I started pondering the idea of a hall of fame for men and women of faith. I think anyone who would be inducted into such a hall of fame would never even want to be there, and those who would like it and seek it, most likely don’t belong there. Those who would be the most likely candidates are probably people you have never heard of because worthy service in the kingdom of God honors the king, not the servant. The full-360 behind the back slam dunk in the kingdom doesn’t bring a roar from the crowd for the athlete. It brings a roar from the crowd for the King of kings and Lord of lords. No one knows or even asks, “Who made that dunk?” Accolades for the worthy kingdom soldiers are few, far between and never sought out, because the soldier of the kingdom knows that the glory is all for the king.
Victoriously in Christ!
– damon
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