So, did anybody see what happened on t.v. last night?  As in football?  As in Super Bowl Football?  Well, I may or may not have skipped some of the game.  I did try to watch some of the half time show.  But ya’ll, Katy Perry.  I just can’t.  I can’t get past the kissed the girl & I liked it song.  I did pull my 11 year old out from in front of the t.v. when Ms. Perry started belting that one out.  I would say in the least, she probably has hundreds of songs in her arsenal to sing.  But she chose the kissing the girl song to sing last night.  Sorry (not sorry).  It just aggravates me.  If she were here, my Mama Boyce would say, “She needs them legs striped.”  Meaning in northeast MS language she needs taken out behind the woodshed.  Which means, oh well, she just needs to stop it.

Anyway, let’s talk about Malcolm Butler.  Did you see him make the winning play?  Malcolm. Butler. Won. The. Super. Bowl.  Now, let’s talk about where ol’ Malcolm is from.  West Alabama?  No, that’s where he went to college.  New England?  No, that’s who he plays for.

Did I hear someone faintly say, MISSISSIPPI??

As in Vicksburg, Mississippi.  Really? Mississippi?  My Mississippi?  The one that has the lowest education rating in the nation?  The one that has the highest obesity rate in the country? The one that you never hear anything nice about.  Yea, that Mississippi.  The one that gave birth to Elvis Presley.  Well, not really.  His mama did, but you know what I mean.  The one where the famous author John Grisham is from.  The one where other great authors like Eudora Welty, William Faulkner & Tennessee Williams lived & worked.  The same Mississippi, in which I have been asked, if we have indoor toliets & running water. 

The one where Eli & Peyton Manning came from.  The one that is home to the John Stennis Space Center (NASA’s Center of Excellence for rocket propulsion testing isn’t in Houston, or even Florida. It’s Stennis Space Center in South Mississippi.)

I’m not trying to chase a rabbit here. I am just trying to make the point that even though Mississippi gets a bad rap, somehow, somewhere we have done some things really right. So for all you skeptics out there, the guy that won the Super Bowl for the New England Patriots was from the wonderful, fantastic, beautiful, & marvelous state of Mississippi. (I must apologize to all of my English teachers for that really long sentence there. When I get excited, I forget that periods are free & I can use them anytime.) You may be saying how could that be that he’s from Mississippi? Well, it just can. (That’s my best explanation right now.)

 

There was a time when someone questioned the place where Jesus was from.  He was from Nazareth.  According to www.bible-history.com, in Jesus’s time Nazareth had an evil reputation .It has generally been attributed to the Galileans’ lack of culture and rude dialect. There was a man named Nathanael, who asked a question about Jesus.

“Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” John 1:46

Nathanael was himself a Galilean. He may have said that because Nazareth was such a common term of contempt among the more “righteous” Jews in Judea. Thank goodness one of the disciples, Philip, was there to say,

“Come see.”

I am happy to say Christ’s being from Nazareth has not had too bad of an effect on His message. I would think He put Nazareth on the map. There may have been some questionable things going on in Nazareth, however, evidently, obviously, there were some really right things going on too. Am I comparing Malcolm Butler to Jesus? Well, maybe sorta. Sometimes it’s as easy as looking for the good instead of the bad. The cream always rises to the top. So did Jesus & so did Malcolm. Before you stereo-type me or Malcolm from being from Mississippi, remember, everybody has to come from somewhere. By the grace of God, we were born & raised in one of the best places on earth.

 

Thank you for stopping by to visit with me today. You are most welcome to come by any time. As for me, I have to be going, because I should be washing clothes.

 

If you want to read more about how Mississippi is awesome sauce & the cat’s pajama’s, you can go here.

To read more lovely poetry about our wonderful state by the talented Patricia Neely-Dorsey click here.

 

Photo credits:

Yahoo! Sports, http://www.patricianeelydorsey.com, http://www.prayfit.com, http://www.mississippibelieveit.com, blacksportsonline