Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

“Come now, let us settle the matter,”
    says the Lord.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
    they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
    they shall be like wool.

• Isaiah 1:18

“See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him.

• Exodus 23:20-21

So Moses went back to the Lord and said, “Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.”
The Lord replied to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book. Now go, lead the people to the place I spoke of, and my angel will go before you. However, when the time comes for me to punish, I will punish them for their sin.”
And the Lord struck the people with a plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made.

• Exodus 32:31-35

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

• Matthew 6:14-15

But with you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, serve you.

• Psalm 130:4

If anyone has caused grief, he has not so much grieved me as he has grieved all of you to some extent—not to put it too severely. The punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient. Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him. Another reason I wrote you was to see if you would stand the test and be obedient in everything. Anyone you forgive, I also forgive. And what I have forgiven—if there was anything to forgive—I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake, in order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.

• 2 Corinthians 2:5-11

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.

In her leaving, she said someone would come.  I had thought that was Jesus, in His second coming, but a new Babs, a little older, the model for the posable action figure arrived.  While I had no desire to start over, Morrie helped her move in, thinking she was the other Babs who had returned.

This Week’s Question

Last week Barbara Bounty and I went to a dinner party at what we learned was the Niblick’s home with a kitchen the size of most school’s auditoriums.  Lt. Deviled Yeggs asked me to be part of an advisory committee in getting a Fire and Police Auxiliary extension mission to feed the homeless, those that try to avoid the mission in the downtown area.  We met Dorothy Cahn, a.k.a. Dot Com, who is the head of the mission and Maeve Yeggs who is the inhouse counselor at the downtown mission.  Since families are sent to Lily the Pink, we met Joseph Jones, the counselor at Lily the Pink, and Pink Lady herself.

I quickly contacted John Downing.  He loves the idea and whenever I can get some advertisements developed, he would be willing to donate on a matching funds basis.  In fact, he suggested that if for every dollar given to the charity, if Amy G. Dala and Pink Lady Apple Yeggs, matched the donations, then he would match that total.  That way, each dollar donated by any non-matching person would become six dollars.  Once he had reviewed what we come up with in getting this thing started, he would infuse money into the start-up.

So far, we decided to meet once a week to do brainstorming.  There is another group that I had never heard of that was starting a brainstorming team, a think tank called the Rogue Scholars of the Rogues’ Gallery.  Whatever.  I was putting the food banks into a spreadsheet to share with both think tanks.  So far, it was not taking up too much of my time, but I was starting to find that my new border, housemate, whatever she was could be a bit needy.

Babs called from the top of the stairs, “Harold, can I come down, just to talk?”

I asked, “Why don’t I come up there?”

Babs said, “I don’t want to put you out, but okay.”

I could walk upstairs without a problem.  Sure I was about ten years older than Babs, but I had lived in the house for most of my life.  The stairs were no barrier at all.

When I got to the top of the stairs, she was waiting for me in her great room, Morrie’s old bedroom.

Babs said, “Harold, can we relook at a Bible study that you already did once before?”

I asked, “What’s that, Babs?”

Babs frowned, like the word was hard to say, “Forgiveness?”

I sighed, “Babs, I know you have a lot of sins that need to be forgiven.  We all do, but yours are rather obvious, at least a lot of them are.  But God has forgiven your sins.  You know what it says in Isaiah 1 about what God does to our sins.”

Babs sighed, “Yes.  It’s the old scarlet crimson, Snow White thing.  But wasn’t Snow White a fairy tale?”

I laughed, “Babs, the expression is God washing our scarlet sins as white as snow and crimson to be like wool, meaning white, just not Snow White, which I think was a Grimm fairy tale.  Are you questioning whether God keeps His word?”

Babs shrugged, “Not really, but I read Exodus 23 where God sent an angel and if the people rebelled against the angel, you would not be forgiven.  With all my sin, could I have rebelled against the angel?”

I held her by her shoulders and looked into her eyes.  “Babs, Exodus 21-23 is referred to as the book of the covenant.  If Israel kept God’s covenant, the Promised Land would be theirs.  If not, they would fail, even in small ways in taking the land that was Promised.  After the Law was given to Moses, God tells him to go down the mountain.  They had made a golden calf and were worshipping it.  Then they approach the Promised Land.  They send in spies, and they trust the spies who say that they cannot take the Land.  Then they try to take the Land without the angel going before them.  They were not true to their covenant, and God let that generation die off.  Only Joshua and Caleb, the faithful spies, entered the Promised Land.  So, let’s not worry about that particular angel.  If your Scarlet Crimson has been changed to Snow White, you can trust that God keeps it that way.”

Babs snarled, “Now you are making fun of me scrambling my Bible verses.”

I nodded, “I apologize, but I think it’s a cute way of saying it.”

Babs turned away, “But then, Jesus said after He gave us the Lord’s prayer that if we don’t forgive others, God will never forgive us.  I have had a lifetime of sins that have been committed against me.  How could I ever forgive all those people?  Some of them are probably dead by now.”

I motioned that we sit down.  “Babs, that is more attitude than action.  We do not have to call everyone we have ever harmed and beg forgiveness.  That might be necessary, but rarely.  Let me give you an example of what God might be meaning here.  Let’s say you die and go to Heaven.  God helps you move into your mansion.  Then, you notice that the guy across the street is Jack the Ripper.  You turn to your left, and Adolph Hitler is watering his lawn.  Then, you turn to your right and the person who harmed you very deeply when you were twenty years old is smiling back at you.  You turn to Jesus, and you tell him that there has been a mistake.  Why are these unworthy people in my neighborhood?  Jesus might just reply that you are the one that is unworthy.  We all are unworthy, but if you hold a grudge against someone, you might just have that person as a next-door neighbor in the next life.  God will fix all those hurts and our sinful way of dealing with it, but God wants us to forgive now.  Those grudges can weigh us down, and we might not be as useful to God as we could be if we were not weighed down.  We need to bury that hurt, wash it away.  Didn’t you just say that you probably have people that you have never forgiven?  Do you remember any of them?”

Babs looked down and shook her head.

I said, “Isn’t that a sign that you have already forgiven them?  Do not let the sun set on your anger, but if you have forgotten about the hurt, please, do not try to remember it.  Let that memory be washed away with your sins.  But if I harm you, please, forgive me.”

Babs looked at me with tears in her eyes.  She wasn’t the previous Babs; she was not worried about a leak.  “I doubt if you would ever hurt me intentionally.  Of course, I would forgive you.”

I asked, “And what about the nosy neighbor who has not changed the position of his security camera?”

Babs shrugged, “Maybe I should beg for his forgiveness.  Every time that I go to the mailbox, I turn to the camera.  I smile.  I wave.  And I blow him a kiss.  I don’t know if I make him angry or turn him on, but I doubt if he likes it.”

I laughed, “On one hand, he deserves it.  On the other hand, I should be jealous.  You have not smiled much at me.  And I cannot remember you ever blowing me a kiss.”

Babs blushed, “Harold, when I moved here, the one thing I wanted more than anything else was to have a relationship with a man that is normal.  I wanted to date and see what happens next.  I went to the dinner party a week ago, but that was not much of a date.  Then we went to the Crystal Mountain, and we saw the water lily drop at the strike of midnight.  Those young engineers had fun building that thing.  We toasted.  We cheered.  You gave me a side hug.  And then nothing.  If that counted as our first real date, I was a bit disappointed.”

I sighed, “Babs, my wife has only been gone about two years.  I don’t know if it counts with the young Babs, but I invested a lot of emotions with her.  I do not know if I will ever be ready, but you have only been living here for a month.  Okay, stand up and face me.”  She did so, and I gave her a full-frontal hug.  “Babs, the young Babs had no sin, and she was young, beautiful and innocent.  You are a bit older.  You have a lot of baggage to deal with, but you are just as beautiful as the younger Babs.  I want you to know that my slowness in this relationship is all my fault.  Your sins are forgiven.  And there is a reason for that.  We need to be ready for service to God, like it says in Psalm 130.  So, from now on, if I disappoint you, whether I am distracted and not paying attention or slow in responding to your signs of affection, let’s look at it the way Paul told the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 2.  Let’s talk about it.  Let’s work out our misunderstandings.  Let’s confess our sins.  And let’s forgive each other.  Okay?”

I started to pull away, but she stiffened her arms and pulled me back into her embrace.  “Okay, but this is nice.  Can we just stay here a little while longer?”

I shrugged, “Sure, but if I don’t check on the turkey tetrazzini in the oven, it might burn.”

Babs growled, but she let me go.

That night, after our regularly scheduled Bible study, she got up from the kitchen table to go back upstairs, but I stopped her.  I gave her another hug, and I kissed her on the cheek.  She kissed me on the cheek.  She smiled, and it was if she floated back up the stairs.

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.

Turkey Tetrazzini was my wife’s favorite way of getting rid of the last of the turkey leftovers, that and a turkey salad (think chicken salad, but with turkey).

And in our marriage, she was the kissing person, and I was the hugging person.  We differed in that way, but we made it work with a little of both.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.