Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

We also asked them their names, so that we could write down the names of their leaders for your information.

• Ezra 5:10

“Son of man, describe the temple to the people of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their sins. Let them consider its perfection, and if they are ashamed of all they have done, make known to them the design of the temple—its arrangement, its exits and entrances—its whole design and all its regulations and laws. Write these down before them so that they may be faithful to its design and follow all its regulations.

• Ezekiel 43:10-11

Then the Lord replied:
“Write down the revelation
    and make it plain on tablets
    so that a herald may run with it.
For the revelation awaits an appointed time;
    it speaks of the end
    and will not prove false.
Though it linger, wait for it;
    it will certainly come
    and will not delay.

• Habakkuk 2:2-3

If the stats are correct, this morning’s post was my 4000^th post.  I hesitate in saying “my” since I felt a calling to do this.

And I am not saying that I am pronouncing a revelation.  That ended with John’s Revelation, but God still speaks to us, and we need people talking about how God is needed in the world today.  We need to know how these times are “appointed times” in God’s plan.  As I wrote near the beginning of this year, according to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we are Living in the Penultimate.

In other words, we may not be in the End Times right now, but we are in the times just before the End Times.  We should prepare accordingly.  We should spread the Word of God as if this was our last chance.  Who knows.  It might be my last chance, but I plan on continuing as long as God allows that to happen.

I look back and I am in awe – not at how much I have written, but in how much God has led me to write and the stamina to do the writing.  I have written while recovering from surgeries.  I have written while in a lot of pain, but it was not me.  It was Christ within me.  Sometimes, it was as if I was going along for the ride.

Thus, I do not wish for anyone to think it was something that I did.

For the past three years, there has been more than one million words published each year.  Since a novel is somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 words, that is ten novels per year, but considering maybe half of those words are quotations, that is still five novels per year.  And that is taking the top end on the numbers of words.  I stand amazed at an awesome God.

This blogsite started haphazardly.  Only 21 posts came out the first month, and it was halfway through the month when there was one steady post six days each week.

In 2020, I felt God tugging on my heart.  People were told to stay home, avoid being around other people.  It is horrible how they singled out churches. As Joel Rosenberg said in a recent interview. Bars remained open. Casinos remained open, but not churches. Even when they let churches start having services again, there was social distancing requirements in Sunday school, and every other pew had to be vacant during church.  I felt a need to share “Sunday school material.”

I was thinking of an old Yogi Berra quote:

“If the people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, nobody’s going to stop them.”

• Yogi Berra

Of course, I was thinking that if people won’t go to church or Sunday school, nobody’s going to stop them.

By this time, I was writing one post each day.  I had been looking at an old philosophy textbook of my son’s and I felt the need to attack another problem that was a burden on my heart – the fact that “thinking” is not taught, and in some circles, thinking is frowned upon.  The media tells us not what happened in the news but how to think about what happened, as if we were too stupid to figure it out.

So, on Tuesday mornings, I posted an essay on philosophy.  Thursday mornings, I posted a detailed Bible Study.  On Saturday morning, I posted a Bible quiz.  All in addition to the daily afternoon post each day.

The Bible studies were inspired by a twelve hour drive to Tennessee, all in one day, leaving at 4:30 am.  I listened to Kevin Sorbo’s The Breathe Bible, a dramatized New Testament, with a lot of people participating.  By the time I reached my destination, I was in tears.  Total immersion does that to you.  You don’t have to drive that far, but you do have to be where there are few interruptions.

That series has worked as planned.  Not a lot of people read it when it comes out, but then there are certain posts that get a lot of action later on.  It is what God wanted me to do: Put a reference out there when people are searching for information.

The Bible quizzes are among my most visited posts.  Of course, October is the time for the Biblical Halloween Quiz and December the Luke 2 Christmas quiz gets action, oddly not the Matthew 2 quiz.

And the philosophy essays have their following.

But that put me up to ten posts each week.

In 2022, again haphazardly starting on Wednesday mornings, my occasional fictional stories about life in the big city of Tracy started appearing on Wednesday mornings.  Not every week, but it eventually became weekly.  And hopefully not sounding “preachy”, the fictional characters talked about their faith more.

When my wife passed away in the first quarter of 2023, she said with me not driving her to kidney dialysis and doctor appointments and visiting her in the hospital at times, I could write more.

I took that to be a deathbed commandment.  With a weird thing that she helped inspire, I started writing a fictional story about two people having a conversation about one biblical topic or another, on Friday mornings.  It is weird calling the Babs and Harold Conversations “fictional” stories since the topics are real and the answers come from the Bible, but after about 15-16 months with the “young Babs” (a visiting angel in a life-sized doll’s body), she was told by her “boss” that her mission was over.  But Harold never realized that the real Babs had been seeing their conversations in dream form.  She had accepted Jesus, and when the dreams stopped, she went to the big city of Tracy to find Harold.  Now, you have two retired people dating each other – sort of.

Now that gave me twelve posts each week.  But then, I started posting my less in-depth Bible study on the Psalms on Monday mornings.  These only come out every other week.

And a big city of Tracy spinoff Bible study on Sunday mornings, Stinker’s Sunday School Class, again a fictional cast of strange characters who get together before going to church to get their minds and bodies geared up for their real Sunday school class.  The teacher is Easter Yeggs’ wife, Jemima, codename Stinker when on the storm chasing team, but referred to as Aunt Jemima to all the children younger than she is.  You have the nursery supervisor at Lily the Pink who, when asked to read a verse, reads it in French (her first language, other than African tribal languages) and then relents by reading it in English.  There is a puppy love thing going on between two thirteen-year-olds and the girl of that couple is the extroverted chatterbox.  Regardless of whether her brain is in gear, she will say something.  And there is Easter’s kid brother who has skipped a few grades and passed his older sister in school.  He whines that Aunt Jemima picks on him with the long Bible readings.  And for those who read the stories, Jemima can sing.  Her best friend, Mary Sheltie Jones, just teases her about her singing.

I try to make it fun while reading Scriptures and seeing how they tie into a specific topic, for now the Attributes of God, but I am praying about what is next.

And if people are wondering, that makes three fictional stories each week out of 13.5 posts (since the Psalms Bible Study is every other week), but there have only been slightly over 300 fictional stories written thus far.

I am also about to reach 2500 days without missing a post.  My last missed day was a day when I was admitted into the hospital with extremely bad kidney stone pain.  I have tried to stay ahead of schedule ever since, and God is Good, all the time.  I might have been sick a few times since then.  I have had several procedures where the aftermath kept me in bed for a few days, and my wife’s passing was a difficult time, often finding the concept of grief as a theme to write about.  I wrote a series of about 20, maybe 19, “My Wife” stories from what she told me about her childhood to us doing what some might not considered dating to our married life. It was over a year later when I read a book that said writing your memories of the spouse who passes is a good way to deal with grief.  I didn’t know that.  I was just compelled to write it.

As I wrote this some time ago, our fiftieth wedding anniversary was approaching. She told me when we were first married that she did not think she would live that long. Somehow, she knew.

God is Good, all the time.

I wonder what will be written over the next 4000 posts.  But one thing remains the same …

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.