Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

If a man or woman living among you in one of the towns the Lord gives you is found doing evil in the eyes of the Lord your God in violation of his covenant, and contrary to my command has worshiped other gods, bowing down to them or to the sun or the moon or the stars in the sky, and this has been brought to your attention, then you must investigate it thoroughly.  If it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done in Israel, take the man or woman who has done this evil deed to your city gate and stone that person to death.  On the testimony of two or three witnesses a person is to be put to death, but no one is to be put to death on the testimony of only one witness.  The hands of the witnesses must be the first in putting that person to death, and then the hands of all the people.  You must purge the evil from among you.

• Deuteronomy 17:2-7

“‘At that time, declares the Lord, the bones of the kings and officials of Judah, the bones of the priests and prophets, and the bones of the people of Jerusalem will be removed from their graves.  They will be exposed to the sun and the moon and all the stars of the heavens, which they have loved and served and which they have followed and consulted and worshiped.  They will not be gathered up or buried, but will be like dung lying on the ground.  Wherever I banish them, all the survivors of this evil nation will prefer death to life, declares the Lord Almighty.’

• Jeremiah 8:1-3

He then brought me into the inner court of the house of the Lord, and there at the entrance to the temple, between the portico and the altar, were about twenty-five men.  With their backs toward the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east, they were bowing down to the sun in the east.

• Ezekiel 8:16

But God turned away from them and gave them over to the worship of the sun, moon and stars. This agrees with what is written in the book of the prophets: “‘Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the wilderness, people of Israel?

• Acts 7:42

As I have written before, I do not believe in coincidences, but about ten days ago, on the Tuesday morning after Daylight Savings Time ended, I experienced heavy traffic all the way to the dialysis center to drop my wife off.  There were easily more than tenfold more cars in each direction.  One-lane underpasses were backed up when we usually had no traffic there at all.  Four-way stop intersections went through the nervousness of who had the right of way and who was crazy enough to take the right of way away from the other person.

The thing is that a week prior, at the exact same time of the morning, by the clock, there were only 3-4 cars on each segment of the journey, maybe ten cars total all the way there, nine miles and ten cars.

What is the difference?  The sun was up.

Were people delaying going into work simply because the sun was not up yet?  Do employers allow for that these days?

I would have expected the opposite.  Being in the Pittsburgh area, the Steelers had played on Monday Night Football, winning their game, barely.  When that happened when I was still working, people came into work late, usually an hour or two late.  They had not gone to bed until after midnight.

My wife suggested it and I agreed.  We are in a hot bed of sun worshippers.  Between ten and twenty times the number of cars as the week before, just because the sun was about to peek over the hillside, as shown in the photo, taken on my return trip after dropping my wife off at the center.

Sun worship was punishable by death in the times of Moses.  Then Jeremiah and Ezekiel prophesied of the punishment for the priests who led sun worship from the temple.

It did not work out for those sun worshippers.  And I pray that the sun worshippers that we met on the road this morning were just not accustomed to the Standard Time schedule and were getting to work on time, instead of their usual hour late – common in the area where I worked.  They would come in an hour late and then leave work an hour early to make up for it.  (Do the math.)

While many in our society are just simply creatures of their senses, others actually worship the sun.  They rely on sunshine to feel good.  If you wake up as soon as the sun enters the window, regardless of the time, you are far from being the only one.  But to adjust your schedule to optimize the sunlight is starting to get on the wrong side of things.  God created the sun.  The sun serves a purpose, but whenever we ignore God and focus on His creation instead, are we approaching sun worship?

Let us praise and glorify the Creator of all things and not the things God created.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.