Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.

• Exodus 20:4

He took the carved Asherah pole he had made and put it in the temple, of which the Lord had said to David and to his son Solomon, “In this temple and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my Name forever.

• 2 Kings 21:7

All who worship images are put to shame,
    those who boast in idols—
    worship him, all you gods!

• Psalm 97:7

Therefore I told you these things long ago;
    before they happened I announced them to you
so that you could not say,
    ‘My images brought them about;
    my wooden image and metal god ordained them.’

• Isaiah 48:5

All her idols will be broken to pieces;
    all her temple gifts will be burned with fire;
    I will destroy all her images.
Since she gathered her gifts from the wages of prostitutes,
    as the wages of prostitutes they will again be used.”

• Micah 1:7

He removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it. (It was called Nehushtan.)

• 2 Kings 18:4

Boilerplate

I’m Harold Dykstra.  I’m retired, but I go to food bank distributions all over Tracy and talk to people that need someone who will listen to their story.  My time is well spent.  A police lieutenant suggested that I write down the conversations that I had with an angel.  I did not know she was an angel at the time.  The angel, for a little over a year, indwelled a life-sized posable action figure my children bought me, so that I would not be perceived as travelling alone.  And in a way, she was training me for what I do while talking to the needy.  She probed my heart to find out what I believed and how I express love for others.  She changed my life.  Since she was a doll that had come to life, we came up with the term ‘other living.’  She was not a human, an animal, or even a plant, but she was definitely living, and very vibrant.  Oh, excuse me, angels have no gender, but the angel indwelled a doll named Bountiful Babs.  After seeing the angel in that form for over a year, I cannot see her in my mind in any other form.

This Week’s Question

In the last episode, Babs visited with Morrie and Willie.  It seems Morrie has repented and is back in church.  Babs was right.  I just needed to keep praying.

For two Sundays, Babs visited with Gladys, who came to sit with us.  Babs and Gladys talked and laughed.  I don’t know if I had ever seen Gladys laugh.  Babs had a special way with everyone.

As we were packing that night, Babs asked, “Where are we going, Harold?”

I shrugged, we have a couple of days to be in Fargo, North Dakota.  We can drive there in a day.  What do you want to do?”

Babs asked, “Do we go through South Dakota?”

I smiled, “Since we are south of there, we have to go through South Dakota to reach North Dakota, unless you want to take a sweeping curve to avoid it.”

Babs giggled, “No!  You said we would go through all fifty states.  I don’t want to miss one, but I heard people say that you just had to go to Mount Rushmore, if you went to South Dakota.  I don’t know what it is.  Is it as beautiful as Mount Rainier?”

I laughed, “No, but it is different.  Rather than something that God made.  The mountain was converted into the faces of four US Presidents:  Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.  It was supposed too be a statue from the waist up, but they ran out of funding.”

Babs asked, “Do people go there to worship?”

I chuckled, “I guess some people do, but it is awe inspiring.  The faces are so huge, if you stood on George Washington’s lip, you might not be able to reach his nose.”

Babs scrunched her nose.  “It sounds big and it sounds impressive.  Where else can we go, something that God made?”

I thought, “Well, where Mount Rushmore is, that is in the Black Hills.  A lot of Ponderosa Pines and mountains.  The Ponderosa has very dark bark.  That is where Black Hills comes from, but still that is considerably out of our way.  How about the Badlands?”

Babs gasped, “Harold!  You think instead of viewing a huge graven image, going to a bad place is any better?!”

I shook my head.  “No, Babs.  The Native American Lakota tribe named it something that was thought to mean bad lands, but the French traders who travelled the area called it a bad land to travel through.  There are hills, valleys, fossil beds and a lot of wild animals.  And when we see what we can see there, then we’ll go to Wall Drug Store.”

Babs looked concerned, “Are you not feeling well?  Are you sick?”

I doubled over laughing.  “No, Babs, Wall Drug Store is a famous tourist trap.  It’s claim to fame was that it was where you could get a glass of ice water when that was extremely rare.  We can spend a little while walking around and seeing the silly things they have on display.  It is old style American Entertainment.  And, we get a free glass of ice water.”

Babs scrunched her nose again, “I don’t know.  Do we each get a glass?  If you are coming down with something, I do not want to share your germs.”

I stopped and stared at her for a few seconds.  “Babs, have you ever been sick, in your ‘other living’ life?”

“No!” she huffed, “and I don’t want to start now.”

That next morning, as we travelled north, Babs asked, “Harold, we have travelled all over this country except for a few states that we are about to go through.  We have seen the Statue of Liberty, the minuteman statue, and the statues of Lincoln and Jefferson in the mall in Washington, DC.  Now there is this mountain turned into a statue of the faces of dead presidents.  Doesn’t it say in the second commandment that we are not to make graven images?”

I nodded, “Graven images is kind of King James Version, but you are right.  But these are images of past heroes that we want to remember.  We don’t worship them.  At least most of us do not worship them.  In this country lately, people have gotten the wrong idea and started defacing statues or tearing down statues.  I don’t understand that.  While worshipping a statue is against God’s Law, thinking that the statue has power over you so that you must tear it down in order to feel safe is equally a sin.  A statue of someone else’s hero should either mean something to us in remembering history, good or bad, or it should mean nothing at all.  Tearing it down is just a waste of time and taxpayer dollars.”

“But the Israelites worshipped these images, didn’t they?”  Babs asked.

I nodded, “Since you said ‘graven images’, I will stick to verses that refer to that term in the King James.  Second King 21:7 talks about an Asherah pole that was carved in the time of king Manasseh.  He was a bad king and he reigned 55 years.  He was the son of the good king Hezekiah.  I think God let him reign the longest so that late in his reign, he saw the error of his ways and he repented.  We might not like how God let something bad like that rule a country for that long, but God saw the chance of redeeming Manasseh.  We forget God had a lot of patience with each of us too.”

I continued, “Psalm 97:7 taunts those who worship graven images, since they cannot do you any good.  And Isaiah 48:5 talks about how the prophets, including Isaiah, told the people long ago, so the people could not claim that their graven image had caused this or that to happen.  And when Micah talks of ‘her’ in his first chapter, Micah is talking about Samaria and Judah, all the Israelites were guilty and their graven images would all be broken into pieces.”

Babs patted me on the shoulder.  “Thank you, Harold, you have done a good Bible lesson.  It is sad that with God right there, showing them His power with so many signs and wonders, the people quickly forgot.  And as for your country, the one we are travelling through, I find it sad that many of these reminders of the cost of your freedom are being forgotten, even with all these statues to remind people.  Maybe like Micah, we need to let them be broken into pieces.  When you cannot remember that the Founding Fathers were mostly great men of faith, then these statues become something that the unknowing people might worship.  Maybe, their efforts are a reminder that forgetting God means you forget how you got here and what made this country strong.”

I pulled off at a rest area as she said that.  Wordlessly, we got out of the car and walked toward the restrooms, but I held her hand.  I drew her close to me and kissed her on the forehead.

I said, “Babs, I thought I was the teacher today.  Yes, you may be right about all those statues.  Even Hezekiah had to break the bronze snake that Moses had used to heal people from snake bites, because people had started worshipping the snake instead of God.  You, my dear, are one smart cookie.”

Babs looked frightened, “I know how you are with cookies, Harold.  I hope you do not get any ideas like that when you get hungry.”

I laughed, “No, Babs, you are safe.  Besides, I have some chocolate chip cookies in the backseat.”

“Oh, you were holding out on me!  How dare you, Harold Dykstra.”

Then we both had a good laugh.

So, we skipped Mount Rushmore. It wasn’t that the likenesses of the four presidents was sinful, but it was man-made. Babs was more interested in what God had made. She’ll even visit the Mall of America, but that was on the way, and she needed more T-shirts, her favorite bedtime attire, along with boxers.

Credits

All these conversations remind me of my conversations with my wife.  We would talk about anything and everything.  And most of the time, it sounded like a discussion in a Sunday school class.

My wife and I went to Mount Rushmore, past the Badlands, and we stopped at Wall Drug Store in Wall, South Dakota, just north of the Badlands.  It is a tourist trap, but it was worth a few laughs just stopping by and taking a trip down memory lane.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.