Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

You, God, are my God,
    earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
    my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
    where there is no water.
I have seen you in the sanctuary
    and beheld your power and your glory.
Because your love is better than life,
    my lips will glorify you.

• Psalm 63:1-3

“What is life?
“Everything we see, touch, hear, taste, feel;
“everything that surrounds us, that we possess,
“that we are used to, that we love.
“What is God’s love?
“Everything we do not see,
“do not touch, do not understand,
“indeed, can hardly believe;
“it is something we do not possess,
“something quite mysterious, out of this world,
“something above and behind everything that happens,
“and yet something so intimate, so earnestly exciting.
“Who would want to choose here?
“It is God’s love that wins the victory,
“and like something humanly impossible,
“we hear it from the lips of the psalmist:
“’O God, you are my God …
“your steadfast love is better than life’ (Ps. 63:1, 3).”

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I Want to Live These Days with You (devotion for October 1, devotions compiled from his writings)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was careful to only quote Psalm 63, verses 1 and 3.  He talks about how God’s love is unknowable, but in the verse 2 that he skips. David speaks of seeing God in His sanctuary.

Rev. Bonhoeffer is speaking literally and spiritually, while King David is speaking poetically.  God the Father is a spirit and does not have a body as man does.

But we can see a lot of evidence of God and His love, but we need Jesus within us to see that what we are seeing is evidence of God.

I watch a television show each week that presents evidence that evolution is flawed, especially down at the origin of species level.  No one denies that small changes can and do occur, but there is no evidence that can eliminate God from the picture.  Even atheistic evolutionists have dreamed up a sentience to “nature” being careful to make it not look like God.

But God’s Love is something that goes beyond our capabilities, especially with our sin nature.  We can love, but would we have put up with the thousands of years since the global flood when God saved Noah and his family?  Odd, how they call it Noah’s flood.  Noah just built an ark.  It was God’s flood, a judgment of the world at that time, and we have the rainbow to reassure us that God will not use a flood to wipe out the entire human race again.

No, the next time, it will be by fire.

But what I am saying is that my patience would have run out by now.  God is waiting for something that has not happened yet, and He continues to pour out His love in the meantime.

What is life?  Whatever it is, it is fleeting.  What is God’s Love?  Do I really need to study that question more than I am so grateful that He loves me?  I owe Him everything in return.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.