Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

They are more precious than gold,
    than much pure gold;
they are sweeter than honey,
    than honey from the honeycomb.
By them your servant is warned;
    in keeping them there is great reward.
But who can discern their own errors?
    Forgive my hidden faults.
Keep your servant also from willful sins;
    may they not rule over me.
Then I will be blameless,
    innocent of great transgression.
May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart
    be pleasing in your sight,
    Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.

• Psalm 19:10-14

On the last night before I left Tennessee, my son and grandson were playing in the church orchestra, and my daughter-in-law was singing in the choir.  But this was not for church.  This night, they played for the Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary (MABTS) during Founders Days.  The seminary has been in existence for about 50 years, but it has only been holding classes in Cordova, Tennessee for 15 years after Bellevue Baptist Church donated about two-thirds of the acreage to build their present main campus.  The pastor at Bellevue was Adrian Rogers at the time, and this year’s Founders Day became a three day Adrian Rogers Preaching conference, with attendees from around the world, and the orchestra and choir for the big celebration on the second night was from the church where my son now attends.

In the photo, my son is playing the clarinet to the left of the conductor.  He also played the bassoon and had to switch instruments in a hurry, but since he sat next to the violin, the bassoon solos were drowned out.  I heard his clarinet solos though.  And my grandson was the furthest flautist in the row, but since he is so tall, the ponytail that you can see, basically behind his father, is his head towering over the others in that row.  My daughter-in-law is toward the far left in the choir and on the back row.

But to top it off, the guest pastor, preaching the first sermon, was Dr. H. B. Charles Jr., pastor of Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, and author of several books on preaching, pastoring, and such.  He preached on Psalm 19, breaking it down into sections.

I enjoyed the entire sermon, even though I was babysitting the two youngest in the audience.  When Dr. Charles mentioned the often-said phrase that “Obedience is its own reward” I looked at the eight-year-old.  He was doodling on a piece of paper, so I took the paper from him and wrote what the pastor said across the top of his artwork.  That aspect of the visit was brutal, but he is behaving in school so far, so maybe something rubbed off.  Now if he can just behave at home…

But when Dr. Charles got to the gold and honey, he made the equivocation that in David’s time gold was the most precious commodity and honey was the sweetest food.  In comparing God to gold and honey, magnified what David says at the start of the Psalm that the heavens shout the glory of God.  Dr. Charles pointed out that telescopes had not been invented, and yet, David saw God’s majesty.  But I pondered how I had gone to the mountains of New Mexico to stare at the sky, and I saw stars and constellations that you cannot see with the naked eye in populated areas due to the light pollution.  You have to go where there are no city lights, even on the horizon, to see such stars with the naked eye, but David had no problem in his day.

Gold may have been the highest priced material in David’s day, but the pastor only mentioned that it was in those days.  I had a feeling pharmaceuticals would rank higher by the ounce, but I was amazed at what I found.  Gold, by the ounce, barely makes the top twenty commodities in value by the ounce in a Yahoo-Finance report.  The top twelve are: Antimatter, Agarwood, Endohedral Fullerenes, Californium 252, Red Diamonds, Painite, Diamonds, Grandidierite, Serendibite, Red Beryl, Tritium, and Soliris.  Antimatter has never been sold.  The price is based on the energy cost of making it, if they ever have, in the CERN supercollider.

I extended the “top” list to twelve to include the priciest drug, Soliris used in treatment of neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder, known as NMOSD.  The disease is rare, and the drug is equally rare.

I have been around the use of Californium 252, a kick starter for nuclear fission, if you will, and at the time when I left one particular nuclear site, I had the dubious distinction of having the highest tritium uptake ever recorded.  I went up to just below the maximum and it stayed there for a few months while I continued to work in that environment.  If I could have only sold my urine, I would be a millionaire – Nope, I doubt that it works that way.  Neither did my wife’s joke of not needing a nightlight.

But, by the ounces, the jewels on the crown might be more valuable today than the gold.  And if you are wondering, painite is a deep red jewel and less than a handful have ever been found.

But what got my attention during the sermon was when the pastor mentioned honey being the sweetest thing to eat in David’s day.

I have written about this before, but my most precious memory of any breakfast ever was when my mother’s father, PawPaw, dressed me up in beekeeping gear and we went out to smoke the hives.  I was probably seven or younger.  When we returned to their kitchen, MawMaw had baked fresh biscuits.  She scooped butter out of the government commodity tin, melting it over torn-open biscuits, and then we poured the honey over that.  The three of us finished off the entire batch of biscuits.  It was so good that we could not stop.  Fresh baked biscuits, real butter, and honey only minutes from the hive – best breakfast ever.  Of course, the people I had the breakfast with were excellent too.

Psalm 19 ends with an often-quoted verse.  It is part of Boney M’s hit song Rivers of Babylon, but much more importantly, many pastors use it during a worship service.  We need to make and maintain a connection with God.

And we need to have our meditations acceptable in God’s sight, for He is the most precious of all things in the universe.  The pearl beyond all price.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.