Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.

• 1 Timothy 4:4-5

The Boilerplate

My wife started to write her thoughts down at one point in her life.  Some hints point to 2018 and 2019, after she had her open-heart surgery.  In spite of her trials and the atrial fibrillation (A-Fib) that required her to take blood thinners, this was before her major health decline.

Sometimes, she wrote a thought.  Other times, she wrote a Bible verse, and maybe her idea on that day.  Other times, it is a prayer, but I am going to take one entry at a time and try to write about it

Her comment

“For everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer.”

• My wife’s next comment in this notebook

The Discussion

My wife quoted 1 Timothy 4:4-5 in the Amplified Bible this time.  At least, I think so.

This is a topic that I do not remember discussing with my wife, but we often talked about how all of God’s Creation was good.  God proclaimed it good, but then the earth was cursed in part of man’s curse – those accursed thorns.

My wife was always thinking of other people.  And she prayed for family members as well as praying for various events, the people on the church’s prayer list, and her friends.  So, if God was going to sanctify something by prayer, my wife did her part.

But these verses got me to thinking.  I worked several years of my engineering life in equipment and facilities maintenance.  Why do you have a department like that?  Things break.

First, man cannot create anything.  As some theologians and biblical scholars have said, the best we can do is to rearrange some of the atoms that God created and left here for us to play around with.

But the Laws of Physics and Thermodynamics speak of not getting something for nothing.  In fact, due to friction or other forms of imperfection, we can never break even.  Thus, the perpetual motion machine is a pipe dream.  We might come close, but …

So, you need that team of people that know how to troubleshoot, the part where I came in.  You had those people who were good at turning wrenches.  Of course, there were degrees of wrench turners.  Some were brutes, but I met a lot of artists.  But usually, the artist never needed me to come out to do any troubleshooting.  And you had the department head to make sure the others involved had the resources that they needed.  Because things break.

And from my experience, they break Easter morning, and any weekend outside a holiday weekend, they break at two in the morning on Saturday morning.  Because of the double time and a half, the wrench turner would be making more than I was, if I really got paid for the overtime.  An engineer getting paid for overtime?  You have to be kidding to think that would happen.

But sanctified “things” are not what concerns anyone.  “Things” do not go with us to Heaven, but we do.

God saves us just as we are, but then the Holy Spirit comes into our heart and shows us what needs to be changed.  The Holy Spirit gives us the power to change it, for we could not do it on our own.  And the Holy Spirit, if we really accepted Jesus, gives us the desire to change.  Some things may take longer than others and in the end, we will not be totally sanctified until the moment of our last breath.

So when these verses speak of sanctification, they are a promise that God is still at work, and He is not done with us yet.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory