"MY BAD"

I probably should be napping but it's not always easy when you're on call..But I did think of something. Do you know where the sports phrase ,"My bad!" came from?

According to World magazine, it was from basketball pro Manute Bol, in his time the tallest in the NBA at 7' '7". He was also a Christian from southern Sudan whose salary mostly went right back to his home country to build local schools, etc. His English was poor and, "In early practices when he missed a shot, Bol, who never had a formal education and knew little English, told his teammates, "My bad." Players repeated the phrase to poke fun at him, until it spread into sports and then mainstream vernacular."

It goes on to say that Manute, whose name means "special blessing", loved his homeland to death. He prolonged his last visit there too long because carpetbaggers from Khartoum were buying votes in the south and he wanted to stay long enough to make sure that the elections were fair. He was well known back home especially for his generosity, and was given the "special blessing" of considerable influence with his poor neighbors who were sorely tempted by the well-fundedJanjaweed bosses. But his kidneys began to fail and a medication given in Nairobi caused a fatal reaction. (Our bad.)

I was considering earlier the title of the Francis Shaeffer book, "No Little People" when I came across this. I don't know how many times I have felt jealous of people who are taller, stronger, more attractive to the eye, more talented etc. It's pretty much a known fact that musicians, say, who are short and fat, will have to have 10 times the talent of their taller competitors to be able to make a dent in, say, "American Idol".

(This is of course is a generalization, but my whole modus operandi is by default statistical. The individual application is the hard and uncertain part. So if I seem to veer crazily between extremes, that's how doctors do it!)

An older and struggling English band, The Alarm, put out an album portraying themselves as young people/male models on a new album cover and the same work they had been doing as a "mature" outfit put them right back on top of the hit parade! (Great at Cornerstone, and with a great point too.)

But if there are no little people, does that also mean that there are no outdated people? No ugly Betty except in our prejudiced eyes? Does this not mean that jealousy and certain types of competition are roughly equivalent not only to real and possibly lasting idolatry, but also declare that God is not to be trusted? And that "fair" does not exist? It's only logical that what is right and fair to God would necessarily seem grossly unfair to us. We just don't get it and maybe never will.

Logos, right?


Obviously even the tallest most gifted of people can not only be humbled but choose humility as well. Knowing only this little about Bol I can't presume to say much more. But like Bonhoffer, he returned to where God gave him life, and knew how sick he was getting, and stayed anyway. Now, that's a Big man!!!