Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Then Abraham rose from beside his dead wife and spoke to the Hittites. He said, “I am a foreigner and stranger among you. Sell me some property for a burial site here so I can bury my dead.”
The Hittites replied to Abraham, “Sir, listen to us. You are a mighty prince among us. Bury your dead in the choicest of our tombs. None of us will refuse you his tomb for burying your dead.”
Then Abraham rose and bowed down before the people of the land, the Hittites. He said to them, “If you are willing to let me bury my dead, then listen to me and intercede with Ephron son of Zohar on my behalf so he will sell me the cave of Machpelah, which belongs to him and is at the end of his field. Ask him to sell it to me for the full price as a burial site among you.”

• Genesis 23:3-9

Jacob replied, “First sell me your birthright.”
“Look, I am about to die,” Esau said. “What good is the birthright to me?”
But Jacob said, “Swear to me first.” So he swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob.
Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate and drank, and then got up and left.
So Esau despised his birthright.

• Genesis 25:31-34

On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”

• Mark 11:15-17

Okay, just looking at these sellers, and you would not think kindly of the profession, but the first Scripture shows Abraham in a foreign land.  The land has been promised to his descendants, but not yet.  He does not want his wife’s body buried in a heathen burial ground, so he buys a cave as his family burial ground, but he buys it from those same heathens.  The Hittites were among the tribes that were Canaanites.  My experience with Hittites is that they were known for being among the first to use iron implements and make steel.

The second Scripture is Esau selling his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of lentil stew.  I like lentil stew, but it was not a fair bargain.  And the last Scripture is Jesus getting angry at the temple merchants that use unfair measures to sell the doves and things used for sacrifices in the temple.

There can be a deal about selling something at a fair price and not cheating the other person.  Not all sales is rigged against the consumer.

But I enjoy playing solitaire on my phone.  The tablet died, so I took that device off my cellphone plan.  Every bit of savings is a good thing, but now my solitaire screen is smaller, and I need glasses to play half of the sixteen games.

I am on a fixed income, so I endure the advertisements.  Most are rather annoying, but the ones that are the most annoying are the ones that advertise that you need this one particular game.  “It is the only game of its type that is both free and has no annoying ads.”

When the ad comes up, I mute it.  Most ads allow you to close the advertisement after 5 seconds, 10 seconds, or 15 seconds.  The really annoying ads about not having annoying ads, will not allow you to close the advertisement for thirty seconds.  If there is any interruption, the thirty second counter starts over at the beginning.  How annoying!!

Well, the phone thought it was smarter than I am, so it downloaded this game to my phone.  Notice that the ads say that the game has no annoying ads.  The game does have ads.  They must think that their ads are not annoying.

It reminds me of Don McMIllan and his Big Data can be Bad Data comedy routine.  I think he says “God” once, but he is mostly clean.  My favorite of his statistics is the last one.

I wonder if the people who advertise that the ads on their game are not annoying ads are among the 90% of Americans that enjoy hemorrhoids.  And yes, I am a few inches too short for my weight, but we stopped at two kids, so I have no data in confirming his first point. But yes, my wife told me that she married me because she thought I was “funny.” Oh, dear. This video changes a lot of things. …

But getting serious for a second or two, we all sell something even if we a selling how wonderful we are to a potential employer or an attractive person of the opposite sex.

Let us be truthful in our advertising.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.