Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

• Genesis 1:26

I cry out to God Most High,
    to God, who vindicates me.
He sends from heaven and saves me,
    rebuking those who hotly pursue me—
    God sends forth his love and his faithfulness.
I am in the midst of lions;
    I am forced to dwell among ravenous beasts—
men whose teeth are spears and arrows,
    whose tongues are sharp swords.

• Psalm 57:2-4

The service was arranged and the priests stood in their places with the Levites in their divisions as the king had ordered. The Passover lambs were slaughtered, and the priests splashed against the altar the blood handed to them, while the Levites skinned the animals. They set aside the burnt offerings to give them to the subdivisions of the families of the people to offer to the Lord, as it is written in the Book of Moses. They did the same with the cattle. They roasted the Passover animals over the fire as prescribed, and boiled the holy offerings in pots, caldrons and pans and served them quickly to all the people. After this, they made preparations for themselves and for the priests, because the priests, the descendants of Aaron, were sacrificing the burnt offerings and the fat portions until nightfall. So the Levites made preparations for themselves and for the Aaronic priests.

• 2 Chronicles 35:10-14

My wife and I went on a simple shopping trip and many traffic mishaps occurred.  But two mishaps stand out.  Before anyone gets worried, there were no crashes, no harmed people or animals.

Before I get to the two incidents, we had multiple near misses.  Two of the near misses were people making illegal U-turns.  I was in the lane just to the right of someone turning left, but he was making a U-turn, even though the sign said that was not allowed.  I anticipated trouble.  We were side-by-side but that did not stop him from pulling into my lane to have enough room to make the U-turn.  I quickly changed lanes.  Just past this intersection, the road turned to limited access.  Then two miles down the road, I was driving off the four lane onto an off ramp when a black car in the shadows pulled out in front of me.  I slammed on the breaks to avoid hitting him.  At the bottom of the ramp, he gave no signal and he hesitated when the road was clear.  He started to turn right but then turned left, making a U-Turn to get onto the on ramp.  He had gotten off at the wrong exit.  He had pulled off the road, under a tree for shade, to figure out where he was.  When he turned right, I was about to turn left, but something told me what the guy was doing.

These are just instances that happen to me every day, people not driving with their brains in gear, as if they are the only ones on the road.  And that brings me to my two incidents.

We were driving down a hill to our pharmacy in the wholesale warehouse store.  We like that pharmacy in that we know almost everyone by their first name and almost all of them know us and have our medicines ready when we get to the counter.  We are that regular of customers, but then they are that good.

On the way down the hill, the driver in front of me stopped and turned his vehicle to block traffic, at least in the two lanes going down the hill.  It became obvious why he stopped.  There was a flock of turkeys crossing the five traffic lanes, a rafter for those that use that term.  The tom turkey was not in sight, but this was a large harem for the tom with at least four fully grown females and at least twenty youngsters that were up to frying chicken size.  Without seeing any beards or the tom strutting, my wife thought they might be pheasants at first.  Within 30 seconds or so, the last of the hens had herded the last couple of youngsters to the other side of the road, but instead of driving on, the driver in front pulled out a camera and started taking pictures from his open driver’s side window.

I blasted on the horn trying to ruin his “photo op.”  Having grown up on a turkey farm, it does not take much to scare turkeys.  All the turkeys ran into the high grass on the far side of the road.  I thought that the guy in front would make a vile gesture, but he waved at me and gave me a thumbs up.  I had herded the rafter (or flock) off the road in time for the approaching cars from the other direction to drive through without killing turkeys.  And I suppose the driver in front got enough photos before I honked.

The thought that the world had to come to a screeching halt because a huge flock of turkeys were on the road stayed on my mind until we got to the grocery store.

At the grocery store, I had decided to allow my wife to shop at her leisure and I went in to get a cold ginger ale, zero sugar and use the restroom facilities.  I went back to the car to read a book.

This grocery store was a superstore of sorts, a store that had about anything food related that you could think of.  There were three entrances and one exit along the main parking lot, with two-way traffic between the store and the parking lot to reach the other portions of the shopping area.  As a result, you could not drive thirty feet (10 meters) without coming to a pedestrian crosswalk or stop sign or STOP painted on the pavement.

I stood at a crosswalk that also had STOP on the pavement AND a stop sign.  I let two cars pass who had stopped for other pedestrians, cars must have a turn too.  (That should be noted at the department store entrance/exit!!!)  The traffic was clear except for a slow moving car approaching the stop sign.  I thought the female driver would stop, travelling as slow as she was going, but as I started to step in front of her, she made no effort to use her brakes.  I used mine, in that I stopped walking.  She missed my toes with her tires by less than two inches.  Yes!  I looked.  She never saw me, even though I was close enough to reach into her open window and slap her.  Instead, I just raised my hands in disgust which gave a few people who saw the incident a good laugh.

Without any injury and with no humans or animals killed, and no cars dented, I had seen two incidents in a manner of thirty minutes that proved something that I have considered lately.  Yes, these were two different drivers, not the same driver in different situations.  But one driver was willing to stop commerce and business on a workday in order for turkeys to safely cross the road.  The other driver was willing to break multiple traffic laws in order to get where she was going because it was only a human in her way.

I have seen people ignore their children but take loving care of their pets.  I have heard people say that the neighbor had it coming when he was injured in an accident while they cried buckets of tears when a stray dog was hit by a car in front of their house, a dog that was a royal nuisance on trash day.

The woke agenda has three prongs when it comes to life. 1) Pets, or animals that might be pets, are protected above all sense, even to the point of giving one’s life to save them. 2) Livestock should be destroyed because they “fart.” 3) Human life is expendable, better to die than to use up oxygen that someone else (a young rich person) might have better use of.

Maybe my observations are wrong here.  But I have even seen that mentality in the church.  I have seen people stoic, and standing alone during church fellowship, when their spouse died, but I have seen a pet die and thirty people huddle around the person who experienced the loss to grieve with them, and you could take 2-3 baths in the tears that are shed.

Yes, people love pets, and I was conditioned as a young farmer that my pet dog was just livestock, “Don’t shed a tear, here’s a shovel, bury her deep so that wild animals don’t get to her.”

I am reading Glen Scrivener’s book, The Air We Breathe.  The second chapter is on “Equality.”  He talks about how Lord Sumption dug a hole for himself, and then with each successive attempts to explain his first comment, the hole kept getting deeper and wider.  His first comment in January 2021, “I don’t accept that all lives are of equal value.”  What he was saying was that when thinking whether the COVID lockdown was necessary, the government had to consider on one hand that the older citizens were at higher risk of dying, but the younger citizens would be harmed financially if not allowed to work, and they might survive getting COVID.  The government had tough decisions to make.  It is odd that the person making the vile quote only thought of retired old people who were expendable and young working people.  He did not think of the poor who suffered the most.  While we think there is equality, at least in our laws, people are not treated equally.  When the rich person speaks, everyone bows down.  A hundred poor people could shout and suddenly the world turns deaf.

But you see it even in the protests.  My special interest group is oppressed.  You have to hear our grievances and take money from the hard-working folks to help our cause.  The rich could afford to help with their loose pocket change, but they find ways of avoiding such things as taxes, regardless of how the government claims that they are closing the loopholes.

But as those angry people are shouting and few of them get cash in return, most remain poor, and most other special interest groups get angry that the others got heard and they did not.  So, the rhetoric continues with people getting angrier and angrier.

It is other people who are angry and do not like us, so why do I have to like them?  If they get in my way as I drive to the craft store or the movie theater, what is wrong with running over them?  But those turkeys?  They have to be protected by us because they don’t know any better.

Our world is not only fallen, it is insane.  Jesus gave us a command, “Love one another.”  He was talking about other people.  God only breathed the life into humans and considered them made in His image.  The livestock and wild animals were simply created.  This is the critical error in the concept of Evolution, that we are just one of many equal species.

And because we sinned, the Old Testament commandments including making blood sacrifices, as illustrated when King Josiah realized they had not been worshipping properly and set to correcting their errors in the 2 Chronicles Scripture above.

Rather than be ravenous beasts, as in Psalm 57 above, tearing each other apart, let us love one another, and at the same time, let us have dominion over God’s creation as good stewards, understanding that we have a solemn responsibility before God to rule over the animals.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.