Aguilera Moments

As always, the Super Bowl this year was full of news making moments. Aside from the actual game and the winning team, Super Bowls have a tendency to create all kinds of side news to give us plenty to talk about. Whether it be the commercials or awards or wardrobe malfunctions, the Super Bowl generates plenty of headlines and conversations.
Super Bowl XLV was no exception. The biggest news after the Packers' win seems to be Christina Aguilera's botching of the National Anthem. People have been both critical and down right angry with her anthem mess-up. I must admit that I feel a bit of compassion for her as I must assume she is thoroughly embarrassed. I know that if I had made a mistake singing the National Anthem at the most watched sports event in America I would want to crawl under a rock.
However, I wonder if the mistake was something that could have been avoided. I'm just going to give my opinion, which of course may be incorrect as I have not spoken with Ms. Aquilera, but I think I'm at least on the right track. It seems to me that there are very few celebrities who can resist making things about them. This isn't the first time the National Anthem has been re-rendered by a music artist. Instead of humbly accepting the invitation and honor of just singing the National Anthem correctly, drawing attention to this great country, doing honor to the nation and its anthem, and then gracefully departing, these artists have to "make it their own" and feel the need to tweak the anthem to make it uniquely their rendition. As though they are recording a new version of an old song, all kinds of riffs and things are added so that the attention is drawn to how the artist did it. There seems to be an it's-really-all-about-me attitude.
This is when things tend to go bad because instead of just singing it, they are more worried about changing it for their glory and fame. Just sing the song and stop being so conceited is my advice. There are some things that are not meant to be reshaped. Better to sing it right and bow out then make a mistake or even butcher the piece.
While it may be easy to ridicule Ms. Aguilera I can't help but think that we all have "Aguilera Moments". Those times where we decide we know better and are more concerned about the focus being on us. Those times where we take God's word and plan for our lives and tweak it to better fit what we want. We go into such decisions with a triumphant sense of pride as we imagine how great it will turn out only to find, as some music artists have learned, we end up with a mess.
Maybe we can all learn a little lesson from a mistake made in the singing of the National Anthem. Our ideas aren't always the best and there are times when we should just do things the way they were meant to be done. This is especially true when it comes to eternal things that God has laid out in His word.
Proverbs 14:12 - "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death."