Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

“I, even I, am he who comforts you.
    Who are you that you fear mere mortals,
    human beings who are but grass,
that you forget the Lord your Maker,
    who stretches out the heavens
    and who lays the foundations of the earth,
that you live in constant terror every day
    because of the wrath of the oppressor,
    who is bent on destruction?
For where is the wrath of the oppressor?

• Isaiah 51:12-13

“There is also comfort in mourning, because in the midst of mourning God gives a song.  His presence in our lives changes our mourning into song, and that song is a song of comfort.  This kind of comfort is the kind which enabled a devout Englishman to look at a deep dark hole in the ground where his home stood before the bombing and say, “I always did want a basement.  Now I can jolly well build another house, like I always wanted.”  This kind of comfort is the kind which enabled a young minister’s wife in a church near us to teach her Sunday school class of girls on the very day of her husband’s funeral.  Her mourning was not the kind which had no hope—it was a mourning of faith in the goodness and wisdom of God; it believed that our heavenly Father makes no mistakes.”

• Billy Graham, Day by Day with Billy Graham (devotion for April 23)

My wife says that I am a broken man.  She points to my lack of mourning.  She points to my weeping – at what she refers to as “the wrong time.”  Okay, I do not do those things correctly, but at times, I have thought that a house that blew up would solve our moving problem.  We would not need to rent a truck or pack any boxes.  I might miss the photos and my hats and my Bible reference library, but …

I know that Satan would never allow my possessions being destroyed.  He knows that I would spend little time mourning over it.

But in past years, Satan has had fun when my alma mater has lost a football game, which happens far too often each year.  I no longer get angry and often do not even get upset.  This afternoon, a week before you read this, Ole Miss is playing Alabama, in Tuscaloosa.  I expect that my Ole Miss Rebels will be behind 40 to nothing before the game starts.  If we do not lose any more ground during the game…  It’s a bonus.

I might have to modify that last paragraph if the unthinkable happens, but as we each grow in Christian maturity, some things that we thought were important are no longer important.  We do not care any less; it just goes from “life and death” to “I’ll miss it or them” to “What does it matter when Jesus calls me home?”

Some of that might be considered “comfort,” but a lot depends on what becomes important.

Keep your eyes on Jesus, and nothing of this world becomes important other than seeing people around you that do not know Jesus.  Their lost souls then become important.

And when calamity strikes us, we gain comfort in knowing that God has us in His hands and the unimportant things of life will be gone anyway.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.