Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it, because I will completely blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven.”

• Exodus 17:14

The Lord said to Moses, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will writeon them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.

• Exodus 34:1

On the staff of Levi write Aaron’s name, for there must be one staff for the head of each ancestral tribe.

• Numbers 17:3

Write on them all the words of this law when you have crossed over to enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, promised you.

• Deuteronomy 27:3

At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

• John 8:2-8

“1. Why did I become a writer? Chiefly, I think, because my clumsiness or fingers prevented me from making things in any other way. …
“2. What ‘inspires’ my books? Really, I don’t know. Does anyone know where exactly an idea comes from? With me all fiction begins with pictures in my head. But where the pictures come from I couldn’t say. …
“5. I enjoy writing fiction more than anything else.  Wouldn’t anyone?

• C. S. Lewis, Letters to children

I am approaching my 4000^th post in less than a week.  This one should be, if the stats are right number 3990.

When I saw this quote from C.S. Lewis, I was captivated.  It seems that he is answering the children’s questions.  The are two questions that I skipped.

Number 3 is about what book is most “representative.”  And C.S. Lewis evades an answer.  This might be due to him thinking that the teacher edited the question.  Would a small child use the word representative?  So, C.S. Lewis asks what do you mean by this word, giving a variety of possibilities.  But then he says that if you are fishing for his favorite books, they were Til They Have Faces and Perelandra.  I had heard that he desired to write the first of these books for most of his adult life.  It is the story of Cupid and Psyche written from the perspective of one of her sisters.  Perelandra is the middle of his space trilogy.  In the first book, Ransom is kidnapped and travels to what could be considered Mars as a human sacrifice basically, but he foils the plan of the others (spoiler alert).  Perelandra is a trip to what we might consider Venus.  Then, the troubles caused by other humans comes back to Earth in the last book.  Frankly, of those three, I preferred the same book, but as the story unfolds, it basically takes all three to tell the story.

And the fourth question is not really a question.  He just talks about how he has a lot of ideas for books in his head.  He does not mention any book titles and there may have been few that became books in that this letter was written less than three years before he passed away.

But of the three answers that I quote above, I kind of agree with the first one.  In a field of engineering, true engineers are these aloof people that dedicate themselves to the equipment, but I chose a different path, to teach the operators and maintainers how to best employ that equipment.  Thus, taking engineering drawings and specifications, explaining how the equipment works, and then how that equipment works best.

But I also dabbled in other writing which led to what I write now: Bible studies, thoughts on living the Christian Life, and my short stories.  That brings in the last question, and I agree.  I feel God is guiding me with both directions.  I love the research and digging deeply into Scriptures, but when I start on a fictional tale, I lose myself in the story.  I have wondered why my bones were aching and then saw that I had written a good three hours past my bedtime, all because I was self-absorbed in the lives of fictional characters.

But the second question puzzles me.  Since I grew up in the television era, I think of a moving picture more than a snapshot.  When it is fiction, I will ask myself, “I haven’t written about that character in a while.  I think I’ll ask him/her what is going on in their lives.”  Then it’s like I see them reading a book or working on their computer, and they look up and they are happy to see me.  Then the story begins to unfold.  But as C.S. Lewis says, “Where that part comes from is still a mystery.”

As for my “thoughts”, at times, I scramble around trying to think if my brain has been in gear for a day or two.  I love the series and mini-series.  You move to the next topic, and it becomes similar to the fictional work; it simply flows.  But when you have been in the basement for two weeks and the grandchildren have not done anything odd and you have only left the basement to teach Sunday school, where do you get the next idea?  Maybe I should look through a photo album to get a picture like C.S. Lewis suggests.

But the Scriptures that I used all speak of writing.  In the first, God instructs Moses what to write and that the writing would be on a scroll.  The second is God telling Moses to chisel out stone tablets, and God will write on those tablets.  When we add the last scripture when Jesus wrote in the sand, these are the only times that I know of when God did the writing.  The tablets disappeared when the Ark disappeared, possibly a spoil of the Babylonian conquest or buried deep in the temple mount.  But the next rain or simply people walking about erased what Jesus wrote in the sand.  People seem to be bold by saying it is the sins of all the people who wanted to stone the woman, but I know of nothing that verifies that.  He may have done what His Father did and write the commandments as a reminder.

The other two Scriptures show how the Word of God was preserved and how they wrote on anything, but God gave them what to write.

C.S. Lewis would not state, especially to children, that God inspired him.  They might take the Narnian Chronicles and elevate it to Scriptural levels.  But God is part of our being, as Christians.  God exudes from us and that can be considered “inspiration.”

But it is by no means the “inspired Word of God.”

I think God nudges me this way or that way, and sometimes I may go down a rabbit hole of only my making.

But to see a writer that I admire and how he tells children what is rolling around in that brain of his…

Okay, I am weird, but maybe not that far off.

As for my advice to others, trust God.  If He wants you to write, you will find Joy in it, and God will make sure His audience finds it.  And even if the audience does not find it, writing is about like prayer, it changes you.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.