Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Moses said to the Lord, “Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”

• Exodus 4:10

So I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!”

• Exodus 32:24

“Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.”

• Judges 6:15

“Alas, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.”

• Jeremiah 1:10

“But I did obey the Lord,” Saul said. “I went on the mission the Lord assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king. The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the Lord your God at Gilgal.”
But Samuel replied:
“Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
    as much as in obeying the Lord?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
    and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
For rebellion is like the sin of divination,
    and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,
    he has rejected you as king.”

• 1 Samuel 15:20-23

“I used to sit by my fireplace
And dream about you
But now that won’t do
There’s a flaw in my flue

Your lovely face in my fireplace
Was all that I saw
But now it won’t draw
‘Cause my flue has a flaw

From every beautiful ember
A memory arose
Now I try to remember
And smoke gets in my nose
It’s not as sweet by the unit-heat
To dream about you
So darling, adieu
There’s a flaw in my flue”

• Jimmy van Heusen, There’s a Flaw in my Flue

I do have a point with this one.  For one thing, I never knew Sinatra had a funny bone.  He belted out such great love songs.  But this one is hilarious.

But have you ever come up with an excuse for not praying as much as you should, and even you thought the excuse was as lame as “There’s a flaw in my flue, and I always prayed in front of a roaring fire”?

If you have not done so, you are a better person than I.  Then again, when you answered that supposition, you might have been thinking hastily.  Think about it.  Think about it. … Yeah, I thought so.

I must hand it to Jimmy van Heusen who also wrote the music to the previous song in this haphazard series (All the Way).  The problem, with smoke going up your nose and a flue that won’t draw, certainly fit a flue that has a flaw.

A flaw in a flue can be a real problem, but there must be some way of thinking of the one he loves by some other method.  Yet, we come up with hundreds of excuses for missing a church service, a church business meeting, daily (supposedly continually) praying, morning devotions, evening devotions, calling that friend who you say is very close, but you have not heard from them in days.  What? Not in weeks?  Months?!  You call them a close friend; can you even spell their name?

Please, do not complain that I am hitting below the belt.  If you need to complain, I presently have a pain with my drain.  My reply to your complaint may take a while for me to respond…

Sorry, the songs may come quicker than before.  When I was suffering from kidney stones and the side effects of the various procedures, I lost some of my notes regarding future posts, but I spent a lot of time convalescing while listening to Swing era music.  The ideas keep coming in that regard.

Here is Frank Sinatra singing There’s a Flaw in My Flue.

And although I had a point about making excuses, I tried to make this a little bit funny to soften the blow.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.