Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
    through painful toil you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
    and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
    since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
    and to dust you will return.”

• Genesis 3:17-19

Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

• John 12:24

Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days.

• James 5:1-3

The name of the righteous is used in blessings, but the name of the wicked will rot.

• Proverbs 10:7

“So man wastes away like something rotten,
    like a garment eaten by moths.

“Mortals, born of woman,
    are of few days and full of trouble.
They spring up like flowers and wither away;
    like fleeting shadows, they do not endure.
Do you fix your eye on them?
    Will you bring them before you for judgment?
Who can bring what is pure from the impure?
    No one!
A person’s days are determined;
    you have decreed the number of his months
    and have set limits he cannot exceed.
So look away from him and let him alone,
    till he has put in his time like a hired laborer.

• Job 13:28, 14:1–6

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

• Matthew 6:19-21

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 volunteered me to help sort donations and stock shelves at a food bank, far from the big city of Tracy.

Today though, Babs was not feeling well when I returned from a sales call.

When I walked into the hotel room, Babs was in bed, both hands rubbing her tummy.

“Babs,” I asked, “Why weren’t you in the lobby waiting on me?  I had a fairly good sales call, but we can celebrate like it was a big one.”

Babs groaned, “I’m not feeling well, Harold.”

I asked, “You are ‘other living.’  How can you not feel well?  You have never been sick.”

Babs shrugged, “Maybe this is the first time.  It hurts where I am rubbing.”

I looked for a moment.  She did not look sick, but I had no idea how an ‘other living’ being should look when they weren’t feeling well.  But when a human rubs their tummy, it might be something that she ate.

“Babs, what have you eaten today?”

“An apple at lunchtime.  We both had a big breakfast,” she replied.

I had to ask. “Was there a worm in the apple?”

She looked at me with a concerned look on her face.  “No!”

I know I shouldn’t have, but I asked. “Babs, do you know what is worse than finding a worm in your apple?”

She scrunched her nose. “Nope.”

“Finding half a worm in your apple.”

She asked, “What does that mean?”  I tapped the side of my head with my index finger a few times, my signal for her to think it through.  Then she gave me a nasty look again.  “That’s disgusting!”

“Exactly!  That’s why that is worse than finding a whole worm.”  I looked in the trashcan, and the core was there.  I sniffed it.  It smelled a little off, and not because it had been in the trash for a little while.  I said, “Did you peel the apple like I suggested?”

Babs moaned, “No, Harold, I like the skin.  It tastes good.”

I shrugged, “But if you had, you might have noticed that this apple was starting to go bad.  If you peel the apple, you have a better chance of getting rid of chemicals on the outside of the apple, but you can also see brown spots.  The start of rot.”

Babs asked, “I have very little experience with anything rotten.  Will I get better soon?”

I smiled.  I had never done this before.  I said, “1, 2, 3.” And then we sang, “I don’t know” to the tune of my doorbell.  I followed with, “You are ‘other living’, but I think it will pass pretty quickly.”

Babs giggled, “They have this sandwich shop here in town that has a grilled cheese sandwich on the menu.  Maybe that won’t be too aggressive.”  It wasn’t what I would consider a celebratory meal, but why not?

When we assumed our positions back in the hotel afterward, she still rubbed her tummy, but she did not have a pained expression anymore.  “Harold, where does rot come from?”

I smiled, “Babs, I am going to expand that answer to include rot, rust, and dust.  And it all started where everything started, that is, everything started to fall apart.”

Babs groaned, “Not Genesis 3 again!”

I shook my head.  “Babs, it all comes down to the Fall of Man.  But woman was not the only one punished with painful childbirth.  The serpent was cursed and has slithered on the ground ever since.  The man was cursed with hard work, Genesis 3:17-19.  And the earth was cursed.  Man would have literal thorns and thistles to deal with, but the figurative thorns and thistles.  Bad bosses, illnesses, bumps and scrapes for all kinds of reasons.  But the earth became broken.  God said Creation was very good, but then everything became broken.  While every man and woman will die, every animal will die.  Every plant will die.  Remember what Jesus said in John 12:24.  Unless a seed dies, you do not have a crop.  That seed must die to plant a lot of seeds.  The core of your apple is where those seeds come from.  If not eaten, the apple becomes food so that those seeds can produce more apple trees.  The secular world calls that the circle of life, but even in a curse, God provides.  One seed planted makes something that produces a lot more than the one seed.”

Babs scrunched her nose. “But all humans die whether you were good or not?”

I nodded, “But let’s look at the beginning of James 5.  The rich, who got rich by taking advantage of the poor, their sins will not be ignored.  But whether they accept Jesus or not, their wealth will rot.  Their clothing will be eaten by moths, and the gold and silver will tarnish.  So, all that wealth eventually goes away.  And they can take none of that with them.  Look at Job’s lament in Job 13 and 14.  A man’s body will rot just like a moth-eaten garment.  And Job even says that only God knows how many our days are.  Our days are numbered.”

Babs smiled, “But you are going to live much longer, Harold.  And you will do good things for God’s glory.”

I smiled, “That’s what I hope for.  I am not proud enough to think my name is that special, but Proverbs 10:7 says that the righteous may be remembered, but the name of the wicked will rot along with the wicked person.  Adolf was a popular name in the 1920s and 30s, but the popularity of Adolf tanked soon after World War II.  That’s what that Proverb is talking about.”

Babs asked, “But what do you keep working for, Harold?”

I laughed, “Back to your favorite, the Sermon on the Mount.  I should store up treasures in heaven, where that rot cannot get the stuff.  Anything left on earth, is left for someone else, but I will keep trying to do good, just to glorify God.  God’s Mercy saves me from my sins, but God’s Grace gives me treasures in Heaven.”

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.

The photo above is of a few Cortland Apples.  They naturally have that grayish coating over the red and green skin.  One of the apples, one of the largest in this pile, had an insect bite, but on the side that looked perfectly clean, there were a variety of little blemishes under the skin.  I shaved off the bad spots, but I dug deep to get all the effects from the insect bite.  I saw the insect bite easily, but I would have never noticed the other blemishes, if I had not peeled the apple.  They were right on the surface.

My wife loved Honeycrisp apples, any apple with bold flavor that also had a crunch.  Cortland apples are not terribly crunchy, and their flavor is delicate, great for salads.  I keep a few apples around to chop into tuna salad.  My wife was not one for excessive sweetness.  She used some sweet pickles in the tuna salad, usually bread and butter, but she added the apple for bulk, sweetness, and crunch.

We all have had our sour stomach days but put your imagination to work.  Here is an ‘other living’ being that has never had a tummy ache.  It was probably more scare and confusion than anything else.  And I have worked it into her ‘other living’ circumstances that the more she eats and drinks and stays in that body, the more human sensations she will get.  But never worry.  Once she leaves her body that she indwells, she will be back to normal, working as Harold’s guardian angel.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.