Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

• Matthew 22:34-40

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

• Deuteronomy 6:5

“‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.

• Leviticus 19:18

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

• 1 John 4:11-12

“Having somewhere to go is home.  Having someone to love is family.  Having both is a blessing.”

• unknown

When I wrote this post, I was procrastinating.  I had only a couple of days to pack the car before a two day trip to Tennessee to visit my son and his children.  But then, a week ago, of this writing, my sister’s husband died.  She has been so sick with bronchitis that it took her a week of treatments that helped very little before she set the funeral for two weeks from now.

When this comes out, I will already have driven back home, but a strange thing has come over me.  I heard The Little Drummer Boy being sung on a CD.  I find it tedious.  I wanted to fast forward to the next song, but then I thought I could endure it.  My eyes were wet in no time.

I had the television tuned to a Christian channel, but I was in the basement writing.  As I walked through, there was an old Christmas story that I had seen before – inventing characters in the periphery to examine how the ordinary person would react to Jesus being born – as if the shepherds were not ordinary.  And maybe Joseph and Mary were the most ordinary, otherwise, God might have looked elsewhere.  And I reached for the remote, but I couldn’t see the button to change the channel.  Those stupid eyes of mine that have chronic dry eye were wet again.

I thought of the first time that my family met my sister’s new boyfriend.  I am eleven years younger than she is, minus a few months.  I was ten-years-old and my mother’s father, the one who taught me how to be a beekeeper, had died.  My future brother-in-law, not even engaged yet, drove a few hours south to pick us up, taking leave from the Air Force, and he picked up my mother and I and drove us to northern Mississippi – the only year in my first twenty-two years that I ever lived in southern Mississippi, the rest in northern Mississippi. Yes, not much time before my wife died, we realized we had both lived in Pennsylvania longer than any other place in the world.

My future brother-in-law had won over my mother’s heart.  He could do no wrong, while my sister and I did not get that privilege.  My wife?  Hardly an after thought and never thought to be part of the family by my mother.  My brother and my brother-in-law were lifted above everyone else.

But oddly, I was ten and personal sacrifice to help people get to a place of mourning did not make sense to me yet.  All I remember was that the bottom of his car was rusted out, and sitting in the back seat, I watched the road fly under my feet through the holes in the floorboards.

But, where were we going?  Home.  Who were we going to meet there? Family.

When my parents were younger than I am now, they announced to my wife and I that we lived too far away.  They would still demand that we visit them, but they would never visit us.  They stayed true to their word.

So, here it is.  I am procrastinating the inevitable.  Tomorrow, I will pack gifts into the car and things that are not perishable.  After I wash clothes the next day, I will pack a suitcase.  I will place the suitcase into a spot saved just for it.  I may pre-pack the ice chest.  With the weather being near freezing in the day and below freezing at night, the drinks and snacks for the trip might be cooler in the car than in the fridge.  That only leaves the computer, my medications, the CPAP, and toiletries for the morning that I leave, with a doctor appointment on the way.

But why do I do it?  Family.

I have often been asked where “home” was for me.  My wife and I agreed.  “Home” was in Germany during the Cold War.  We were totally isolated from family.  If World War III started, as they called it “the balloon going up,” there was no place called home on that continent.

So, why was it home?  Because in that place during that time, we relied on our neighbors even if we did not like them or trust them that much.  During those three years during that deployment, they were family and being around them was home.

Yes, I may have more aches and pains than my parents when they were my age, but God’s command was to love one another.  And my wife’s focus was always on the family.

So, I went down there.  I hugged and I shared memories and I listened to the same fears that I faced alone two years ago when my wife passed away.

And if you are reading posts a week or two from now, I made it back home.  God has been my guide.  I have veered from the path at times.  But God has seen me home.

If you have a home, thank God.  If you have family, praise God.  If you have both, glorify God with all your heart, lifting praises in Joy.

I might be able to write more, but that pesky dry eye problem has more wet stuff in my eyes at the moment.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.