Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

The child grew and was weaned, and on the day Isaac was weaned Abraham held a great feast. But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking, and she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.” …
God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer. While he was living in the Desert of Paran, his mother got a wife for him from Egypt.

• Genesis 21:8-10, 20-21

Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of a hundred and ten. And they buried him in the land of his inheritance, at Timnath Heres in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash.
After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals.

• Judges 2:8-11

The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of Samuel’s words fall to the ground.

• 1 Samuel 3:19

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

• Hebrews 11:1

To explain the photo, I visited my grandchildren at Christmas.  For about fifteen years, a little boy’s Santa suit that he wore when he was eighteen months old had been hanging out to dry in my basement.  My son was out of work, and they had moved in with my wife and me.  They went back to the Tennessee, Mississippi line to find work.  As a certified school band director, he found a job making doors.  He has bounced around since then, mostly as an elementary school music teacher.

But when they left in the summer, they never thought of the Santa suit.  So, this year, I was determined to reunite the Santa suit with the little boy who is now well over six feet tall.  He obliged by putting on the suit.  He got both feet into the pants.  He got the coat over his head, and he topped the coat with the hat.  Only problem was that there was still six feet of body between the coat and the pants.

In the Scriptures above, there are three specific people who grew up and one group of people who grew up.  But growing up does not mean growing up in the right way.

Isaac and Ishmael each had God protecting them, but Isaac grew to be a patriarch, a devout man of faith.  Ishmael went his own way, relying on the skills that God had helped him develop.

The people of Israel turned away from God after Joshua died.  A couple of times in the book of Judges it says that the people had no king, and they did as they pleased.  The lack of a king was an excuse.  God was their king.  They just ignored God.

Then Samuel grew up.  He was faithful to God.  And he would, in time, anoint two different men to be king of Israel.

But the key to growing up is to grow up in the Lord.  There are so many cases where two people grow up in the same home, with the same upbringing, and one follows Jesus Christ and the other falls away.  Being a Christian is not a matter of head knowledge but taking that head knowledge to the heart.  You must trust in God.

Maybe the one that falls away makes a challenge to God, “God, if you do this thing for me, then I will believe in you.”  Then, when God did not deliver, then why go through the pretense of worshipping a God that does not deliver?  God does not play that game.  Faith is what we hope for, not what we have already received.

As for the little boy in the photo that grew up little by little over the years, he has his head screwed on straight.  He is in the church orchestra, reads his Bible, and discusses the intricacies of the Christian faith with others.  He has professed his faith, and I think that confession is genuine.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.