Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

For the Jews it was a time of happiness and joy, gladness and honor.

• Esther 8:16

Remember, O God, that my life is but a breath; my eyes will never see happiness again.

• Job 7:7

To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

• Ecclesiastes 2:26

“God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to bum, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”

• C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Looking at the three Scriptures, the Jews were happy due to their circumstances in the Esther quote.  They had good reason to be happy, but they were still in exile.

Job thought he would never see happiness again, also due to his circumstances.  He would be very happy in the future, so, his lament was short sighted.  Then if we had all the troubles he had at that moment, including friends giving him bad advice, we might be a little depressed.

And then, when you see those two Scriptures, we can agree with Solomon.  Chasing after happiness is fleeting.  It is meaningless.

But, that is what eventually led me to God although I was in the church the entire time, getting very little happiness or Joy.

From the time my parents lost the farm until I was a few months beyond my seventeenth birthday, roughly ten years, I read humorous stories and lighthearted adventures.  I watched every variety show that our two and a half channels could provide.  Note: There was one network that only came through on rare occasions.  The weather had to be just right for the signal to bounce off the clouds, or so I was told.  I watched as many sitcoms as possible.  In those days, most of the sitcoms were funny, but the parental role models were beyond reach.  I have never met a true Ward Cleaver.

But then I met other children my age with Joy and I followed them to the Bible teacher’s house on Friday nights.  Yes, we had a Bible teacher in public school.  The course was an elective, but all those kids with Joy attended.  At the Bible teacher’s house, we had punch or juice, and people gave their testimonies.  I had been in church all my life and I never heard a testimony.  And I did not have one.

I said the salvation prayer every Friday at those meetings.  I said the salvation prayer every night before I went to bed.  There were various other events where I said that prayer, but one night, I stared at the ceiling and said, “God, I am not saying that prayer.  I give up!  Do what you want with me, but I can’t take this anymore.”  I thought I heard someone say, “That’s what I’ve been waiting for.”  God transformed me a great deal that night.  For one, I got a great night’s sleep, having been an insomniac, and still on occasion.  But then, as I read the Bible, the passages that I had just read the night before had a totally different meaning.  I almost missed the bus that morning.  I read a passage and then said, “So, that’s what that passage means.”

I found my inner Joy and that makes the circumstantial happiness have an extra zing to it.

I do not know if I completely agree with C. S. Lewis though.  Momentary happiness can be found, but sometimes the low afterwards is even worse because you remember the happy moment.  So, lasting happiness without God is virtually impossible and you would wear yourself out trying to build one momentary happy moment on top of the old one, with diminishing results each time.  And Lewis uses the word religion where I would replace that with a relationship with Jesus Christ.  I am getting totally fed up with religion.  Yes, I am an elder in the church but not on the ruling board.  That is virtue of the deal regarding – once an elder, always an elder.  And I teach a Sunday school class.  But I say what is on my heart whether that jives with church politics or not.  And I have ruffled feathers as a result.

But even with the constant Joy of God in my heart, I still enjoy watching old reruns of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In.  Watching them for the first time, my mother laughed for the first time after we lost the farm.  She was always stoic, good times and bad.  If she could not handle the bad, she hid in her bedroom to cry.  No one was allowed to see her shifts in emotion.

I could never live like that.  She thought I was weird, not really liking me in the first place, but hating me having all the emotions and showing them.

But over the years, I have noticed so many of those funny people on television who made me laugh.  Their personal lives were tragic.  Many of them had tragic ends to their lives.  So much fun on the outside, but a lack of Joy on the inside.

I love the days when the outside matches the inside.  But I always have Joy.  God never leaves me.  With the source of Joy right there, how could I ever lose that?

Here is Simon and Garfunkel singing Feeling Groovy.  They are joined by the Smothers Brothers near the end.  This is a song that brightened my day whenever I heard it or sung it.  But the question is, why do we feel groovy?

It’s great when you feel groovy because you have Joy on the inside that does not change regardless of the circumstances.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.