Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Listen, my sons, to a father’s instruction;
    pay attention and gain understanding.
I give you sound learning,
    so do not forsake my teaching.
For I too was a son to my father,
    still tender, and cherished by my mother.

• Proverbs 4:1-3

I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because Abraham obeyed me and did everything I required of him, keeping my commands, my decrees and my instructions.”

• Genesis 26:4-5

When I babysat in Tennessee when the school year started, I wondered if there was any hope for the youngest.  He went out of his way to do exactly the opposite of everything I said.  I know he is smart.  If I told him to do something really bad, I am sure he would figure out the reverse logic and do what I said to do – the bad thing.  So, I did not experiment with that.

Now that he has been in school for a while, and he is a year older, having a birthday not long ago, he still plays violent video games, although most are cartoonish.  He still talks so much that if a human life is limited by words, he won’t make it past high school before he will remain mute the rest of his life.  He still pesters his sister, but he does follow instructions, even the instruction to be quiet – but only after you totally lose your cool.

So, he is a work in progress.  And some of that may have been grieving.  Now that I am here on the second visit by myself, he does not associate my presence with the absence of my wife’s presence.  But then again, he’s a kid, and he is “going through a stage.”  When my brother-in-law said that, I told him that my stage had left the station a long time ago.

All we can do is pray that he does as Proverbs 4 suggests in the first verses, to listen to his father’s instructions, including his Heavenly Father.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.