Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”
The Lord said to him, “Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus. When you get there, anoint Hazael king over Aram. Also, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi king over Israel, and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed you as prophet. Jehu will put to death any who escape the sword of Hazael, and Elisha will put to death any who escape the sword of Jehu. Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.”

• 1 Kings 19:14-18

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

• Matthew 25:34-40

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

• Genesis 1:3-5

Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.
Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them.

• 1 John 2:7-11

I have mentioned before that my workplace for writing is in the basement.  I come up for air to go to the restroom, get a bottle of water which leads to the first thing again, and to have meals.

I used to come up to check on my wife when she was still living.  I was her caregiver for the last five years of her life, taking her to therapy, doctor visits, and tests at the hospital.  Then when her kidneys failed, there were the three trips to the dialysis center each week and nearly monthly trips to the other kidney access center for unnecessary angioplasties (because the nurse was not doing her job right and she was lazy, thus the problem with dialysis was always the patient’s fault).  Sorry, the Bible mentions how parents and teachers have a special burden upon them.  If they lead someone astray, it would be better if they had a millstone tied around their necks and thrown into the deepest sea.  Well, I think nurses who cut corners and lead to the death of their elderly patients should have a similar fate.  God mentions how we should care for the widows and orphans (fatherless in the OT).  And God speaks often about the needy.

But these days, when I run up the stairs, approaching two years after she passed, I get to the top of the stairs and realize I had left my place in the basement for no reason at all.  It took me a year and a half to realize those interruptions were my internal clock telling me to check on my wife, and I had not reset that alarm to not ring.  I still do it, but I convince myself that it is okay.  If for no other reason, I needed the exercise.

Wow!  That was a long introduction to say that my monthly meeting at the church, not counting Sunday worship, had arrived.  The meeting was over.  I needed to get a prescription filled.  And my free OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software had died suddenly.  The scanner interface died, and the software seemed to laugh at me each time I tried to upload a PDF.  Talk about a lack of communication!  After a lot of research and absolute pure falsehoods and misrepresentations on the internet, I realized to get a reliable OCR, I would have to buy an annual service.  But this was after I went to an electronics store to buy the one-time purchase software.

A young guy with glasses shrugged and he would take me back to the one-time purchase software.  I was the one that found the brand, and he determined which version was the one that I needed.  But then, the barcodes would scan, but I could not purchase the item.  I was left with going home and buying it online.

But in the meantime, he mentioned that he was studying cyber security.  He said that due to me using language that most customers did not know, like a “backdoor” interface that my free software had used that finally quit working, since the Microsoft interface refused to work for my scanner.  As we conversed, he mentioned that he was going to get his associates degree and then enroll at Regents University for a bachelor’s in two majors, cyber security and theology.

Pow!  Bang!  We had a conversation that only lasted about thirty minutes, while he tried everything he could think of to help me buy the software.  It was not wasting time while the store paid him.  He had finished high school.  He was hooked on vaping, romancing the ladies, and drinking.  He grew up Catholic and never heard about Jesus being this real person who wants to reside in your heart, but then he heard this preacher talking about that, and he realized everything that he was doing did not fulfill him.  There was no Joy there.  He accepted Jesus and then he heard about a revival at the Point.  He and some friends went.  When the Holy Spirit was strong in their midst, someone suggested a mass baptism, and he joined in, being baptized.  It was probably in the fountain at Point State Park, where the Allegheny and the Monongahela Rivers come together (the confluence) to form the Ohio River.  The park is roughly at the foundation of an old fort, named different things based on who controlled the fort at the time, but one name being Fort Pitt.  Now, a beautiful fountain, where there were a lot of people baptized.  Odd, how it never got on the news.

I told him about my experience of coming to Jesus at the same time that the Jesus Revolution was happening in California, but I was in Mississippi.  The Holy Spirit is not limited by geography.

He was the first to mention it that our meeting was not by chance at all, but God ordained it.  And I agree.

Now for the Scriptures.  Elijah had his greatest victory on Mount Carmel, but Queen Jezebel put a price on his head and ordered Elijah killed.  Elijah ran away.  He lamented that he was the only one left to serve God, but God says that Elijah was misinformed.  There were 7000 in Israel who had never bowed a knee to Baal.

Sometimes, we see the world going to Hell, and we think the End Times have already started.  Maybe the birth pains, as Jesus mentions, but let’s not get carried away like Elijah did.

Then we have the discussion by Jesus after the parable of the sheep and the goats.  Jesus says that whenever you have helped the least of these, you have done it unto me.  The young man was helping me.  I am not Jesus, but we found that we were kindred spirits, and for a few minutes, neither one of us was alone.  Ah, back to Elijah who thought himself alone.

And have you ever asked why God separated the Light from the darkness on the first day of Creation?  The sixth day, he created so many different kinds of animals, including man and woman, but all He did on the first day was separate Light from darkness.

But the Light and the darkness are a theme throughout the Bible.  God is Himself Light.  Evil lurks in the shadows, in the darkness.  We get a great description of that struggle in 1 John 2.

And after meeting this young man, I went to the basement with a load of laundry.  I wrote a great deal while the laundry was being washed and then dried.  I folded the clothing, while taking a break from the writing.  As I walked up the steps with the laundry, folded, ready to be put away, I noticed that it was still daylight.  I thought I had been down there long enough for it to be dark.

Then, I realized what I had experienced that day.  I had a wonderful monthly meeting at the church.  There were laughs.  There was sorrow.  But mostly, there was light.  Then the chance meeting that was not by chance.  And then God had me writing ten pages, my fingers a blur over the keyboard, and there was still light.

And an old professor had a pop quiz that he loved to give to classes, most often for students who were not engineers.  The pop quiz had only one question, and he rarely gave this quiz unless it was a night class, but occasionally when the thunderstorms had hidden the sun.  The quiz question was, “Is the sun shining?”  He always marveled about how many people said, “No.”  But the sun is always shining, whether we notice the sun’s rays coming down to where we are or not, the sun continues to shine.

Whether you write in your basement or in a greenhouse where the sun always shines when visible in the sky, we need to realize that we are not alone.  There are others who can enrich us while we enrich them.  And when like hearts meet, that internal light shines.  There will be no sun or moon in the New Earth, for God’s presence, His Light, will always be with us.  God wants me to continue writing, but I long so much for that day where God’s Light will shine and there is no day or night, for I am in His presence.

But until then, I must emerge from my basement writing space to see the light, and I may have to leave the house to be reminded that I am not alone.

And you are not alone either.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.