Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 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 4:7-12

“Here I go again, I hear those trumpets blow again.
All aglow again, takin’ a chance on love.
Here I slide again, about to take that ride again.
Starry-eyed again, takin’ a chance on love.

I thought that cards were a frame-up, I never would try.
Now I’m taking that game up and the ace of hearts is high.
Things are mending now, I see a rainbow blending now.
We’ll have a happy ending now, takin’ a chance on love.

Here I slip again, about to take that trip again.
I got that grip again, takin’ a chance on love.
Now I prove again that I can make life move again.
Um – I’m in the groove again, takin’ a chance on love.

I walk around with a horse shoe, in clover I lie.
And brother rabbit of course you better kiss your, foot good-bye.
On that ball again I’m ridin’ for a fall again.
I’m gonna give my all again takin’ a chance on love.”

• John LaTouche and Ted Fetter, Taking a Chance on Love

I do not know if this song could be salvaged to be a worship song, but oh, would I ever want it to be.

I was brought up in a family that went to church every Sunday, and, at times, we were at the church nearly every day of the week.  My mother occasionally practiced the organ.  We sometimes set up the bread and wine for communion.  We rarely missed Wednesday night prayer meetings or Sunday night worship.

But with all that, I felt little love at home.  My Dad was stern and taught me to never show my emotions, something that I continuously failed to do.  My mother was strict, and tough love can sometimes not resemble love at all.  I got stoic love, shown in actions, from my father’s mother, but if I needed hugs and kisses, I went to my mother’s mother.  We were thick as thieves as a result.

But when I was a senior in high school, rarely getting half a night’s sleep due to insomnia, God was letting me know something was wrong.  And when I accepted Him, it truly was “Taking a Chance on Love.”

They can talk about how blind faith is not the right kind of faith, but those who say that either never experienced it or they do not remember.  The things of God are foolishness to those who do not know God.  When you reach out to God to find a love that you never found in an earthly form, it is a step of blind faith that takes God from the intellectual to the spiritual.  Sure, you can have your proof and logic.  Those are good to have, but to transform from thinking of Christianity as something foolish to being the only reason why you take the next breath…  That is totally blind from an intellectual standpoint.

And then several years later, I had been wronged or simply rejected by every woman or girl that I had ever dated.  I was done with romance.  Then, I met a woman who had that idea in common.  She had her work mate shaving male patient’s private areas before surgery as the agreement for her to date one guy, one last time.  Note: They do not shave the incision site anymore since there is no evidence that surgical site infections are reduced by doing so, but they did back then.

That man’s wife, my landlady, asked me to give her a try.  I might have sung this song, but I had no interest in love.  At some point, she would break my heart.  But thinking of taking a chance on one date again.  That was my plan.

But then when I saw her, I heard the trumpets blow again, and I felt like taking that ride again.  Sure, it was all a frame up.  I could not win.  But somehow, just months later, with that one thing in common, that we had both been wronged by past suitors, she walked down the aisle.  Even then, she begged her father to take her home to hide instead of taking that walk down the aisle.  She was a flight risk.

And every phase of our love life, as life changed and we changed, was a glorious thing.  The last, when she could hardly do anything and I was doing everything around the house, was the one where we loved each other on a spiritual level more than at any other time.  The idea today about love is that you love when you get or in anticipation of getting.  That’s not love.

God loves us because God is Love.  He loved us before we had our sins washed away by the blood of Jesus.  We have no way to love God in return other than through Jesus Christ who paid the price for our sins.  The Holy Spirit literally enters us to teach us how to respond to God’s love.  Even that is nothing that we do.  We are broken.  God is the Creator of all things.  Only He knows how to fix our brokenness.  And only He can do it.

I had 48 wonderful years with a wonderful woman.  I am again, as far as earthly love interests, back thinking that the game has ended now.  I took one chance on love, and it lasted most of my lifetime, thus far, but that was romantic love.

When I accepted Jesus as my Savior years before I would meet my wife, I took a chance on Love, and that will last forever.

Here is Ethyl Waters singing Taking a Chance on Love.

There were many singers who have recorded this song, but this excerpt from the movie Cabin in the Sky (1943) with Ethyl Waters singing and Eddie “Rochester” Anderson playing a guitar caught my eye.  She sings it in a dreamy fashion, as if she is, at that moment, taking a chance on love.  Ethyl Waters was a dear Christian woman, and Eddie Anderson became Rochester van Jones opposite Jack Benny on radio in 1937 and remained in that role until the Jack Benny television show ended in 1965.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.