Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

• 1 John 1:7

Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.

• Acts 20:28

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

• Romans 8:28

A couple of years ago, I came to a strange realization.  I had read well over 2,000 mystery, adventure, or spy novels.  Yes, someone asked me while I was working on a NASA project, “How much do you read every day?”  What they saw was the trade journals, the government regulations, the technical journals and specifications for the rocket motors we were supposed to build, and then a few short stories or a novel during lunch.  But you never ask an engineer a question like that.  I found out.  I created a spreadsheet, and just in work-related reading, I read about 1,200 pages every week.  Then my lunch reading was pathetic in comparison, but most of that was at home at night. And for thirty years, I have recorded it all in a huge spreadsheet. That spreadsheet led to me buying novels by the box load and devouring them.  And I still read the Bible every day.

But back to the realization: Would anything in those novels become part of a conversation in Heaven?

Wait.

Stop just for a moment.

Have I wasted all those hours?  My writing about Deviled Yeggs, a homicide detective, is meaningless in Heaven where there is no sin, there is no death, there is no pain.

In Heaven, if you bring up a murder mystery, nearly every aspect of the mystery is meaningless.  The motive to murder is no more.  The opportunity might be there, but the means to murder would be gone.  Nothing about that murder mystery would make sense to those listening.

I suddenly realized why Dorothy L. Sayers, in the height of her popularity with her Lord Peter Wimsey novels… (The reason I have a category of Wednesdays with Wimsey – people have told me that I misspelled whimsy.)  But Dorothy L. Sayers devoted many years to a translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy.  Yet, the itch was still there, and a few novels have been written from her notes.

But on the earth, this broken world of ours, we have such things, and a light-hearted story about a detective who wants to bring justice for the victims and make a little sense out of difficult situations is something we need at times.

But when it comes to buying novels, I am very selective.  My most recent set of purchases at a used bookstore only included about a half dozen novels (over half as gifts for my son), while I collected about 25 Christian reference books.  Hey, they gave me more for the books that I sold to them than what I expected.

But while on this earth, we need diversions at times, but the best diversion from the vagaries of this life is more time with Jesus.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.