Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him so that another man has sexual relations with her, and this is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected (since there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act), and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure—or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure—then he is to take his wife to the priest. He must also take an offering of a tenth of an ephah of barley flour on her behalf. He must not pour olive oil on it or put incense on it, because it is a grain offering for jealousy, a reminder-offering to draw attention to wrongdoing.

• Numbers 5:11-15

He may let them rest in a feeling of security, but his eyes are on their ways.

• Job 24:23

Like the blind we grope along the wall, feeling our way like people without eyes. At midday we stumble as if it were twilight; among the strong, we are like the dead.

• Isaiah 59:10

The Scriptures all speak of “feeling” or “feelings.”  The first is a bizarre ritual.  If a husband “feels” that his wife has been unfaithful, she is to take this elixir which will have no effect on her if she has been faithful, but if she was cheating, the resulting child in the womb will miscarry and her belly will swell.  Bizarre, yes.  But I wonder if that is how the Salem witch trials came up with the dunking concept.  Tie the supposed witch to a lever.  Dunk her in the lake.  And if she is still alive when they use the lever to lift her from the water, then she is a witch.  But if she died, ummm, oh well!?  Oops?!

Job speaks of a sense of security and God is that for those who love Him.  More than feeling, God is security.

And feeling our way in the dark?  God is Light.  Without God, we feel our way in the dark without even knowing it.

For all the talk about how someone loses the “feeling” of becoming a Christian, the above Scriptures (a second refence to “feelings” in Numbers 5 a few verses later, in summary) are the only references to “feeling(s)” in the NIV. Sure, other places talk of such things without use the word, but we have the gifts of the Holy Spirit to know God’s presence in our lives.

I have written recently, as late as yesterday’s post, about something that I heard or read from a theologian or pastor.  When you do not believe in God or are angry with God, not trusting in Him, God will cast you into the Lake of Fire.  In so doing, He is giving you what you always wanted, a place where you will not be “bothered” by His presence.

I usually go on to say something about how that person will realize at that moment how much God had been a help to them over the years.  That the Lake of Fire would be torment, forever.

But I had no data.  A scientist needs data.  The engineer needs the relationship of one thing to another that the scientist generates to use the principle that the data reflects in building something or making something work.

Now to those who may be tired of me writing about the grief process, I am going to do so again.

My wife passed away in mid-March.  Sometimes for a week at a time, I can function normally, no fits of remorse or no moistened eyes.  I am getting used to the new schedule, or might I say, the almost total lack of a schedule.  I am getting used to being alone in the house.  Since my wife was in Tennessee babysitting children during the COVID lockdown, trapped by the lockdown in that she was babysitting prior to COVID, I am getting back into that COVID lockdown mode, plenty of writing time and the SUV sits idle several days each week.  And my concentration for writing is improving, not back completely yet.

But then, something will spark something else, and I get this feeling of foreboding passing over my entire body.  I feel ill.  I cannot concentrate on anything.  And my eyes forget that I have chronic dry eye, they stay wet and drippy all day.

My wife was my companion for 48 years.  When you add our dating, you almost get to 49 years.  We were not always together.  One pharmacist got in trouble by putting a nickname on my wife’s prescription medication bottles, Mrs. Vacation.  While I was working around the world, my wife would drive or fly to Texas and visit her family.  It was an old habit from the military.  When I went on maneuvers, she took the train to the Netherlands to visit her cousins.  She was a master of train schedules.  That is why she hated my secret missions.  She never knew when I was coming back – a mission during one day, an overnighter, a week, two weeks.

So, we were not constant companions, but for most of my business travel within the USA in the past 25 years, I took her with me.  She got to know a lot of my co-workers that way.

Genesis 2 says that a husband and wife become one flesh.  As a result, when I have this bad feeling, I get a tightness in my chest, but also pain in my stomach and abdomen, never a pain in one distinct spot.  I get this feeling that part of me is missing, not some other person missing from my life.

I recognize the feeling and I deal with it.  The other day, I prayed that God would just let me cry for a while.  After about five minutes of prayer, He answered my request.  I felt better afterwards, but not back to normal either.

Then, the day before writing this, it dawned on me that I had my data regarding what it feels like to not have God looking over me, helping me, or for those who hate God or do not believe God, interfering with them.

If you have had a spouse or a friend that was your bosom buddy for many years and then that person was gone, you feel a strange emptiness that has no center.  There is not this one spot where you can scratch or add a heating balm to make it go away.  It is there, but it is not there.

Now, forgetting the pain of a Lake of Fire, you are bothered by an emptiness, and you can never scratch that itch, never make the pain of that emptiness go away.  That might be close, and probably far too trivial to compare to God not being there for you, whether you believed in Him or not.

There is still time.  If you are reading this, you are still breathing.  God is the answer for that emptiness in your life.  Commit your life to Him.  In a way, you are dying because you die to self-will and accept God’s plan for your life.  The flip side to the condemnation at the Great White Throne is to have your name in the Book of Life and spend eternity with Jesus.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.