Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?”

• Genesis 39:9

How great is God—beyond our understanding! The number of his years ispast finding out.

• Job 36:26

At that time I pleaded with the Lord: “Sovereign Lord, you have begun to show to your servant your greatness and your strong hand. For what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do the deeds and mighty works you do?

• Deuteronomy 3:23-24

And the twenty-four elders, who were seated on their thrones before God, fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying:
“We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty,
    the One who is and who was,
because you have taken your great power
    and have begun to reign.

• Revelation 11:16-17

“The imagination enlarges little objects so as to fill our soul with a fantastic estimate; and, with rash insolence, it belittles the great to its own measure, as when talking of God.
…
Things which have most hold on us, as the concealment of our few possessions, are often a mere nothing. It is a nothing which our imagination magnifies into a mountain. Another turn of the imagination would make us discover this without difficulty.”

• Blaise Pascal, Thoughts (thought numbers 84 & 85)

Blaise Pascal, in his book, Thoughts (Pensées), organizes his thoughts by topic.  These two were in the section on “The Misery of Man without God.”  But I see this all the time with God fearing people.

I have gotten nice statistics, on a rare day, and I say, to no one in particular, because no one is in the house but me, “Wow!  My stats are great today!”

And then, I almost immediately say, “Sorry, Lord, you are the one that directs people to my humble site.  We had viewers from five continents today.  I must remember always, I put the seed in the ground with a lot of help from you, and you do the rest, from watering and weeding to the harvest and beyond.”

I think that is what Blaise Pascal means by these two thoughts.  We think we have done something great and then we compare that to God and then we consider for our great thing, which is not that great, to be completed, God was helping us all along.

It might take the wind out of our sales a bit to understand how much God does for us each day.  But then again, He created the heavens and the earth in only six days.  Whatever we accomplish, it is slim pickings compared to what He does each nanosecond.

And for Blaise Pascal to write this, he did a lot more than I have done.  He only invented the first digital calculator in the 1600s, a mechanical device.  His advances in mathematics include the Pascal Triangle, among many things. He made advances in probability theory when a friend asked for advice about gambling.  He discovered that vacuums exist, and his work with pressure led to Pascal’s Law, the pressure in a vessel of gas has equal pressure in all directions.  He also worked with advancing our knowledge of atmospheric pressure and the change of atmospheric pressure with altitude.  He also invented the syringe, the roulette wheel, and the hydraulic press.  His last “invention” was a mass transit system.  He fixed wagons with rows of seats.  The wagons were drawn by horses with drivers that took the fares.  Each driver could take passengers over a set route with a set time schedule to easily get across the city of Paris.  His goal was to help the poor get to and from work and improve their lives.  It proved at the time to be less than profitable, and the last line shut down roughly 13 years after his death.  And this does not even begin to mention his writings, some of the writings garnered stern warnings from the Catholic authorities, due to his thoughts being outside doctrinal norms of the times.

And yet, he recognized that his contributions were nothing compared to God and God’s help in seeing him through to the end of those accomplishments.

For anytime that our imagination says we did something great, God could say that He fought off diseases that could have hampered our progress and He ensured that we continued breathing.

Blaise Pascal did not take care of himself.  He told the doctors that if God wished for him to stay longer and do more for others, God would see to it.  Pascal was a mere 39 years old when he passed away.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.