Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

• Jeremiah 29:10-13

My wife had purchased an adult coloring book.  One side of the page was a coloring page.  The other side of the page was a Bible verse.  Sadly, she did not attempt to color any of the pictures in the book.

The first verse was Jeremiah 29:11, which talks about the plan to have God’s people prosper in the land they had been promised.

But when I taught a Bible study on Jeremiah and we got to this chapter, where was the focus?  Just as it had been in Jeremiah’s time.  The exiles listened to the false prophets who said they would go home soon.  Jeremiah was telling them to settle down and make your oppressors wealthy.  For as your community is prosperous things go better for you.

That’s the way I tried to do my work.  My projects had the best profit by percentage of any projects that the company had.  My projects were small, and if I had a full-time salesman, then my prophets could pay his salary, my salary, and still make a great profit.  But they laid off the salesman, and I learned how hard it was to sell what I did.  It involved too many moving parts, something that our salesman knew all about.  And I do not blame him for not giving me his contact list.

But part of managing projects successfully is to have a plan.

“If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans”

• Woody Allen

Some say that Woody Allen was just quoting an old Yiddish proverb, but he has a point.

Whenever the work on a project was split among a few people, I got very little profit.  I am not saying that they did not have a good work ethic, but their heart was not in it, while my heart and reputation were on the line.

But when I taught this chapter in Sunday school class, the focus was on “I am going to be dead before the remnant returns to Jerusalem.  All the good news in God’s plan was about my grandchildren.  How does that motivate me?”

Of course, if I had just been exiled, I was part of the problem, with some notable exceptions, that sent us into exile.  Like they say, “Don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time.”

But those people in Jeremiah’s time who had been sent off to exile thought they could get away with it just like their parents and grandparents had done.

But God’s plan was that a remnant would return, and they would be grateful.  They would worship properly.  And even when that might not work out, God saved the family line of David so that Jesus would be born at the right time, in the right place.

Why do we dangle our feet over the edge when tempted to sin?

God’s plan works out.  Our plans … not so much.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.