Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

“If anyone uncovers a pit or digs one and fails to cover it and an ox or a donkey falls into it, the one who opened the pit must pay the owner for the loss and take the dead animal in exchange.

• Exodus 21:33-34

“‘Of the animals that move along the ground, these are unclean for you: the weasel, the rat, any kind of great lizard, the gecko, the monitor lizard, the wall lizard, the skink and the chameleon. Of all those that move along the ground, these are unclean for you. Whoever touches them when they are dead will be unclean till evening. When one of them dies and falls on something, that article, whatever its use, will be unclean, whether it is made of wood, cloth, hide or sackcloth. Put it in water; it will be unclean till evening, and then it will be clean. If one of them falls into a clay pot, everything in it will be unclean, and you must break the pot. Any food you are allowed to eat that has come into contact with water from any such pot is unclean, and any liquid that is drunk from such a pot is unclean. Anything that one of their carcasses falls on becomes unclean; an oven or cooking pot must be broken up. They are unclean, and you are to regard them as unclean. A spring, however, or a cistern for collecting water remains clean, but anyone who touches one of these carcasses is unclean. If a carcass falls on any seeds that are to be planted, they remain clean. But if water has been put on the seed and a carcass falls on it, it is unclean for you.

• Leviticus 11:29-38

I am the secretary for our church’s prayer warriors.  They get a list each month to pray for the people on the list.  The list is four pages.  The first page is a list of those that we have prayed for the previous month who have gotten a good result from the prayer, listed as praise and thanks, and a lot of administrative things.  The next two pages include those to pray for.  The last page contains a devotion that I write, usually a shortened blog post, and three Bible verses.  At the prayer meeting, we literally stand on the Word of God by reading those three verses while standing, and each month one verse rotates off and another is added.

Okay, so that is what I type each month, really edit from the previous month for the most part.

But a month or so ago, I called the lady who manages the list, with input from the members on the team.  I called to add someone to the prayer list, a relative of mine had fallen and was in the hospital.  She said that she would send out an e-mail with his information and a lady from the church who had fallen and damaged her arm.

I jokingly said, “Our prayer list would be a lot shorter if people just did not fall.”

She groaned and said that we had a lot this year.

Since I had a spreadsheet of every prayer request for the past year, I noticed we had 18 between January and November.  There were a couple of months where we had no reported falls, but a couple of people had been falling a lot.  We had people who had passed away due to falling.

The year 2024 had been a year of falls.

My wife complained about it to a doctor a few years ago.  She was on a blood thinner, and she was required to go to the hospital if she fell, in fear of a brain bleed that could be serious since she had little ability for her blood to clot.

The doctor explained that walking is a form of controlled falling.  We almost fall all the time.  As our weight shifts, we learn as a toddler, to shift our feet to regain our balance.  With a well-padded diaper, most of the falls are harmless, but I took a little boy to the infirmary after we had been in Germany for about a week.  He fell forward and found out that hardwood floors were not forgiving.  It required a couple of stitches from a medic who had never done it before, at least on a human.  There was no lasting scar.

But as we get older, we sense that we are losing our balance, and our reaction time is slow in getting our body to readjust.  If we do not readjust fast enough, we will lean too far and we fall.  Sometimes, it does not require old age reaction time.  Something could be physically wrong.  I know someone in that category and I want her to know that I am praying for her.

I wrote a year or two ago about falling and Dante’s Inferno broke my fall.  Literally, my hip landed on the book.  I had the book on the floor, sorting books that I had read into two boxes, one to keep and one to sell at the used bookstore.  Otherwise, I would have hit the floor.  I was bruised and a bit jumbled for a while, but otherwise unharmed.  But even now, I notice how I have difficulty on the stairs.  The railing is there for a reason.  When I worked for DuPont, it could be an offense that was serious enough for termination if you did not use the handrail.  It showed a lack of a good safety attitude to not use the handrail.  But I have no handrail to the basement.  I often bounce off the wall.  Come to a stop.  Make sure I have my bearings, and then proceed.

If it is at all possible, do not fall.  And if you have an issue with falling, see a doctor.  But in the meantime, you might have to make accommodations for yourself. For me, the fall led to me sitting on the bed to put my pants on.  I cannot do the flamingo thing to get my pants on without getting off balance anymore – a small sacrifice to prevent injury.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.