Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”

• James 4:6

“If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not treat it like a business deal; charge no interest. If you take your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge, return it by sunset, because that cloak is the only covering your neighbor has. What else can they sleep in? When they cry out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.

• Exodus 22:25-27

”But Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes of mice and men
Go oft awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!”

• Robert Burns, To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with a Plough, November 1785

“Oh, would some Power give us the gift
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us,
And foolish notion:
What airs in dress and gait would leave us,
And even devotion!”

• Robert Burns, To a Louse

“Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And the days of auld lang syne?”

• Robert Burns, Auld Lang Syne

Okay, I am two days behind in posting this for Burns Night, but my Burns celebration was the theme for a prayer meeting that I had two weeks ago.  With January 25 being Burns Night, and singing Auld Lang Syne on January 1, should January not be Burns month?!

But I doubt if Robert Burns (1759-1796) would want it that way.  He was a farmer at heart, even after selling his book of poems not long before he died.  He worked as a tax collector in his last years, but he loved farming, although he admitted he was not very good at it.

And that sums up Burns to some degree.  He was married to Jean Armour, but he had affairs with other women.  Yet, many of his poems, a lot written about his wife, show a man of humility and compassion.

I often like the stories behind the story.  To a Mouse is about him plowing in the field and he overturns a mouse’s nest.  He goes on from verse to verse about how compassionate he is.  He weeps for the mouse and the mouse’s family.  But then after the famous line about the schemes of mice and men, he warns the mouse.  He tells the mouse to look at yon house.  Then he says words to the effect that although his heart is broken about your present plight, that is my house and do not think it to be yours.  Compassion, but only to a point.  But aren’t we the same way?

Another of my favorite stories unfolds in To a Louse.  Picture this, Robert Burns was a typical church going Christian.  He had his pew, and he had his routine regarding that pew.  Everyone that was a regular visitor to the church knew he sat in that pew, and he desired to look the pastor in the eye.  How better to keep his attention on the sermon?  But then a rich woman wanted to make a rare appearance.  She sat directly in front of Robert Burns, blocking his view entirely with her flowered bonnet, a bonnet she probably had a servant arise long before dawn to cut the flowers and weave them into the bonnet.  Now without a view of the pastor, his mind wandered.  But his eyes saw the flowers of the bonnet.  And as he focused on one flower, he sees a louse emerge from the bloom, having its morning meal.  Thus, the poem ends with the lament that it would free us from many a blunder and foolish notion, if we could only see ourselves as others see us.

From a poem with compassion for a homeless mouse to pity for a proudful woman who thought she had a beautiful bonnet, but really had a meal for a louse, we see the common things of life unfold in his verse.

And that should be a lesson for us all in that we need not look at the loftiest of heights, we see few people there.  But let us till the soil with the common folk, and find what life is all about.

When we love our neighbor as ourselves, we are richer by far than the man in the manor on the hill who has no one to share life with.

And the photo above is of my special Burns Celebration.  I made Banoffee Pie and Cranachan, and they all had a wonderful time at the prayer meeting.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.