Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep.
All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again.
The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. There he went into a cave and spent the night.
And the word of the Lord came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

• 1 Kings 19:4-10

“A severe case of ingrown eyeballs strikes all of us every once in a while. In both dramatic and subtle ways, the stubborn enemy of our souls whispers sweet little nothings in our ears. He reminds us of how unappreciated and ill­ treated we are … how important yet over­ looked … how gifted yet ignored … ho capable yet unrecognized … how bright yet eclipsed … how valuable yet unrewarded.
“He visits the mother of small children and the wife of a wretch­ of-a-husband and tells her, ‘How terrible is your plight … how un­ fair, how unbearable!’
“He slips into the office of the faithful worker who has been by­ passed … swamping his mind with the slimy green silt of self-pity.
“…
“Feeling sorry for yourself today? Why not try God’s remedy: take a break, stop trying to work things out yourself.  And take a long loving look at your Savior in His Word … and then spend some time with a friend.  You’ll be amazed at the outcome … you may even discover the solution to the smog problem.
“A Finishing Touch:  Self-pity is the smog that pollutes and obscures the light of the Son.”

• Charles R. Swindoll, The Finishing Touch (Devotion for week 48, Monday)

I have written about how 1 Kings 18-19 is one of my favorite passages in the Bible.  Elijah is center stage, and God defeats the prophets of Baal, but then Jezebel puts a price on Elijah’s head and Elijah runs away, just to have God correct Elijah’s errors of thinking.  For one thing there were 7,000 who had not bowed a knee to Baal.

Of course, the entire routine of earthquakes and wind and fire.  But God’s voice was in none of those.  God’s voice was in the quiet whisper.  Why do we have churches that are falling apart these days?  It is too noisy, and people do not listen to whispers anymore.

But that being said, Rev. Swindoll gets it.  The abused wives and workers have room for some self-pity.  Those in the hospital can legitimately ask, “Why me?”  Of course, if they smoked three packs a day and they have lung cancer, they might be able to figure the answer out.

But I have complained about being overlooked.  I read a post from a well-known pastor who writes a blog and he said that if we write about how wonderful we are, but we were overlooked, then we were not that wonderful and we needed a reality check.  But I might ask that pastor if he had worked a regular day job, would he do any better?

I was working as hard as I could.  I took work home with me for unpaid time (call it slavery if you will).  And then the boss asks what motivates me.  He does not like my answer, but since I have been denied the promotion that was promised, and I am working as hard as I can and I am intelligent enough to do quality work at that pace… What is the boss going to do?  He is going to double the projects that I am working on and he is going to freeze my pay so that the cost of living goes up and my pay stays the same.  What is the result?  I work even harder and take even more work home.

I gave the boss no incentive to lessen my load.  I gave the boss no incentive to give me the promised promotion or the pay increase.  And I gave the boss the incentive to drive me into an early grave if he could because he would get a promotion out of it.  And sadly, the new boss came in and saw the same thing – thinking that me working that hard for that little pay – there must be something wrong with him, so I won’t give him the promised promotion either.

You look at that and say, “Those bosses are evil personified.”

Yes, you are right, but that is what I put up with most of my career.  It became so much the norm that I anticipated the next boss to be worse, not better.

But God orchestrated all that so that I was used to writing all day and into the night.  My pace in this blogsite is about normal.  Actually, I have longer rest breaks here than before.  Because I have the best boss ever, my Savior.

As for the smog, Rev. Swindoll makes his finishing touch statement sound a bit strange.  The smog is the pollution.

But my first trip to China was to Shanghai for two weeks.  We never saw the sun.  Rev. Swindoll’s finishing touch statement mentions not seeing the “Son” instead.

On one day in Shanghai, we went to the curb and hailed a taxi from the office where a friend and I were teaching.  A student in the class asked about the sun, and the two of us looked into the sky.  I looked westward and I saw a patch of smog that was more orange than the surrounding smog.  I pointed to where the slight orange glow was.  My friend looked directly overhead and there was another orange glow.  He pointed to that one.

In thinking of the two spots in the sky that were a slightly different color, and thus could be the sun, it took me years before the thought came to me.  “One of them was NOT the sun, so what was it?!?!?!”

The photo above was taken by me on the only day when the air was a little clearer, I went to the Shanghai TV tower, the tower with two balls of observation rooms on the Shanghai skyline to take this photo, the only time that I saw the ground from that high up, but the higher smog layer still prevented him seeing the sun.  The large building in the photo is a hotel, the tallest hotel in the world, at least at the time. In five trips to China, I almost saw the sun during the Beijing Olympics 2008.  I worked near Yantai for a week, and the sky was almost clear of the smog, but not quite.  And on Chinese television, I saw a lot of ping pong.  The USA basketball team was televised, but the games always started after midnight, and I had to go to work the next day, until the day that I had to go to the airport in the even earlier morning.

Do not let self-pity spoil your view of Jesus.  God put you where you are for a purpose, and you must find what God wants of you.  When you do, you will find the suffering was a refining of fire.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.