Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

• Genesis 1:1

This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

• Genesis 2:4

Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.

• Hebrews 7:25

“What we choose really does matter. If we live in an exclusively material world, human life—including mine and yours—is absolutely meaningless. No matter how intense our passions, how great our accomplishments, or what side of history we choose, all of this will turn to dust in a universe doomed to extinction. Nothing apart from God counts, as Solomon so eloquently wrote four thousand years ago in Ecclesiastes—words that ring true today.
“But if there is a personal Creator, if God is, then His creation can reflect His character; it can reveal God’s purposes for us. Our lives instantly gain meaning. The world becomes a means of knowing God as well as our dwelling place. We can truly be the reasoning, imaginative, creative persons we believe ourselves to be.
“How we understand ourselves and the world around us determines the kind of life we make. The early Christians showed us this as they swabbed the foreheads of plague victims; so have the Amish. Whether we believe that God is affects not only our families and our culture, but world history. But how do we know how we are to live in this world God has given us?”

• Charles Colson (with Harold Fickett), The Faith

The photo above is my first Christmas present this year.  I received a gift for my neighbor.  I walked to his house to deliver this misdelivered package.  He laughed and told me to wait a minute.  He came back with this box of petit fours.  Our neighbor across the street had received it and knew that I was away for the Thanksgiving holiday.  She knew that my next-door neighbor was always keeping an eye out for me, so she gave them the package to deliver to me.  We laughed at the multiple wrong deliveries, but all came out well in the end.

I used this as my featured media because I ate two petit fours each day until only Merry Christmas was left.  I started shuffling letters around, trying to make words out of what was left.  I was not always successful, but I got serious with six letters left.  I spelled CRIMES.  That does not sound very Christmasy, but our sins are crimes against God’s Law.  Then I spelled RISE.  For on Easter Christ rose from the dead.  Without His death and resurrection, Christmas is not worth thinking about.  Then I spelled IS that last day.  I whispered to myself, “Yes, God IS!”

In the second chapter of Chuck Colson’s book (with Harold Fickett), he brings up the first point that he feels is fundamental.  It almost goes without saying, “God is.”  If we are to be Christians, you would think that the existence of God is understood as foundational, but I have talked to church members, and they have admitted that they doubted that there was a God.  Some were convinced that “God” existed, or at least, He once did, but this “Jesus character” was definitely a myth.

If you have problems with this statement, then why even show up at church?  These people were long in the tooth.  Maybe, at one point decades ago, they were seeking.  They did not find anything, but going to church became a habit.  Hey, they had a lot of friends cry at their funeral and say wonderful things about them, but where had their soul gone?

Colson brings up three worldviews about creation.  I will discuss them briefly which might explain some of his words in summary above.

Creation could be totally by accident.  If so, everything in life is meaningless.  The earth’s existence is by mere chance.  Our existence is by mere chance.  But then why do we have this burning desire to find meaning in our lives?  Even atheists, who preach the idea that life has no purpose, breathe another day for the “purpose” of convincing everyone else that no one has a “purpose” for being here.  Curious.

Another view is that an intelligent designer made this world, cranked up the clock, and then left us to sort things out.  Since there was intelligent design and an intelligent designer, we might have had the purpose of amusing the designer as we started to learn, but again, without the designer interacting with us, our existence is meaningless.

Then the third idea is that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are true.  God not only provided the intelligent design, but He did also so with purpose.  God wants us to seek Him.  And if our purpose is to seek and find the Creator, then God’s creation is an obvious means of seeing God in everything.

Too many make a cursory look and find nothing.  The first Cosmonauts came back from outer space during the space race.  One of them said that they had seen the heavens and there is no God.  For one thing, God is a Spirit and does not have a body like man.  For another, the universe, that world outside our earth’s atmosphere, is only one of the “heavens.”

God wants us to seek Him.  If we truly seek, God will reveal Himself to us, but we must seek Him humbly.  We are tiny creatures in a big world, and that world is a tiny rock in a big galaxy, and that galaxy is one of millions of galaxies.  And God made all of it.  The mind-blowing thing is that God chose me, and He loves me.  Knowing that God is and who God is, I can only go to my knees in humility and thank Him for loving me on a personal level.  As a result, I have no other desire than to serve Him.

Lord, show me what are the foundations of “the Faith.” Help me to understand what is the bedrock of your church.  In Your name I pray.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.