We missed a deja vu post but these celebrity deaths are just in the past week. Chuck Mangione passed this week as well, someone will mention it if I don’t. So far in the first half of 2025 we have also lost Bob Uecker, Gene Hackman, Roberta Flack, George Foreman, Val Kilmer, Ruth Buzzi, George Wendt, Phil Robertson, Sly Stone, Brian Wilson, Connie Francis and Pope Francis (no relation on those last two). There have been others but those are the names I would expect most people to recognize. You may not recognize the name Martha Knighton but chances are you have seen her before in something.

Martha Bird Knighton was born in 1928, so that means she is close to 100 math fans. Her parents managed the Henry Grady Hotel in downtown Atlanta for many years. She was a cheerleader at the University of Georgia and married a pharmacist. They raised a family together and she now has several grandchildren and great-children. Well into her 90’s she has continued to work as a substitute teacher and take modeling and acting gigs when she can get them. The first pic above is from the new Amazing Stories series produced by Apple TV. She appeared earlier this year in the reboot Four Seasons movie.

Miss Martha may not have ever achieved celebrity status. She could tell stories all day about actors and directors she worked with and kept hoping for her “big break.” She had a small role in the Waltons movie remake and hoped that would get picked up as a new series – but it did not. Don’t let me give the impressions that she pined away in some sort of depression because she did not. She lived a long full life and was very happy, inspiring others with that same optimism and energy. Her pastor was a notes guy, as in he would print and distribute pages of notes to go with his Bible study. She shared many outlines with me just in case I could reuse them. Let the record show I have never reused someone else’s material but I graciously accepted because it was in her nature to be helpful and generous. It was my honor and privilege on a few occasions to take her to her favorite restaurant – Burger King – for a Whopper meal with onion rings. In years past she dined with royalty but later in life couldn’t find anyone that wanted to go to Burger King.

I keep talking in past tense. Miss Martha is still with us but took a fall recently; I won’t share all of those details. She has already outlived one of her children but please pray for the extended family and many friends. If that seems like a strange request, pray for my family.

Sometimes things appear in the Satur-deja Vu that should have been their own post. I thought I could toss some Martha Knighton pics in there and mention who she was and move on. Let me just add John MacArthur to the list of those who have left us in 2025 and we will shift gears and try to move quickly.

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Filed under Things the British Eat.” I’m more likely to eat this than have beans for breakfast.

Enough is enough. If these two have been spotted surely the “Caught on Kiss Cam” meme has run its course. I don’t know, we’re still talking about the Epstein files. Have you heard about bipartisan legislation to bring in former DOJ’s and even the Clintons for deposition? Don’t they know that people who ask the Clintons questions tend to suddenly and unexpectedly commit suicide?

Nona Gaprindashvili was slighted in the movie The Queen’s Gambit and took her case to court, suing Netflix for defamation. Here is the rest of that story:

What if you wanted Crocs that could go anywhere? I don’t know why anyone would want Crocs in the first place but if you have been waiting for all terrain Crocs they exist now.

Here is your Magic Eye puzzle for the week. (If you don’t like to use magic the generic term for this type of image is stereogram. Magic Eye is a registered trademark. Every soft drink is not a Coke, every flying disk is not a Frisbee; that sort of thing.)

And finally…

We will finish Leviticus tomorrow! I have apologized for approaching Leviticus like something we have to get through. I preached a sermon on Sunday and shared a post this week on finding the Gospel in Leviticus. I plan to take just one day off and then start Numbers. There are some long chapters in Numbers, not all of them of course, and there are more of them than Leviticus. Baseball is a game of stats so that means Numbers is kind of like the baseball of the Old Testament. There will be some exciting things that happen. We will also read the longest chapter in the five books of Moses in a little more than a week from now. I have avoided splitting some chapters in half by posting the reading one day and the discussion the next but I don’t know this time fam.