Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel.  Under his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky.  But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank.

• Exodus 24:9-11

Who is this that appears like the dawn,
    fair as the moon, bright as the sun,
    majestic as the stars in procession?

• Song of Solomon 6:10

My wife and I had gone out for a visit with friends, and we had a marvelous time.  My wife had her dialysis that morning.  The dialysis center had taken a bit too much off and her legs were starting to cramp as our visit with friends progressed.  But she and I both were on a high, just having face time with old friends.

It was not like we were visiting with God, as in the first Scripture, but at one point on the way home, I became lost in the beauty of this strange area that I was driving through.  The trees were starting to change, and they seemed to glow.  The dull pavement seemed to shine.  The old buildings that had not been painted for over 25 years seemed to glow.  I rounded an unfamiliar curve on this idyllic drive in the middle of nowhere, and there was a stop sign.  I abruptly stopped.  My mind snapped back into reality and I realized that I was about four miles from our house.

I do not know where I had been inside my mind, but I was physically on a road that we had travelled more than 6,000 times.  Sorry, I did some rough math, but probably over 10,000 times.  It was my way home from work for all those years, but I seemed to not even be the one driving that day.  My mind had gone to a happy place.  Nothing looked or felt familiar.  I was having a “God Moment.”

But what triggered it?  As I looked up from the road into the sky, I saw the bluest blue sky that I had ever seen in the Pittsburgh Area.  Pittsburgh usually has an eternal haze.  My telescope friends who climb on the roof of their homes in the middle of the night to take photographs or video complained for over 20 years about how the stars were perfectly aligned for some picture taking, but then it would be cloudy or hazy and they could not focus the camera on the moon, constellation, or whatever they were filming.  But this sky was like the lapis lazuli sky in the first Scripture.  The clouds, the few that appeared, were like cotton balls.  It was as if a cartoonist had drawn the sky.  Everything glowed because the sun was bright and clear with no haze to dim the light.

Now that my mind could process what I was seeing, I had no more trouble in getting home, but I was asking God questions all the way.

Is this what Heaven is like?  Is it a familiar path, but it is simply brighter and cleaner than anything that I have ever experienced?  Or is everything brand new, every curve in the road leading to the next adventure?

For a moment, everything was so bright and clean that I was disoriented, and I can only thank God for the experience.  And I might have to thank Him for driving the car while my mind wandered.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.