Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

I’m Jemima L. Yeggs, a.k.a. Stinker.  Pink Lady Apple Yeggs, my landlady and my auntie, wants to read about how younger people, especially couples respond to what the Bible says.  And she wants to know how God is at work at Lily the Pink.

B.B. and I skipped the ‘green room’.  We were simply too busy.

Joseph led us in prayer.

Emmett’s band was great, as usual.  The song was See, I Make All Things New.

Emmett added, “I tried my best to find something that fit the topic, but this was the best that I could do.  Was it okay, Aunt Jemima?”

I asked, “The song was wonderful, as usual, Emmett.  Your choir and band did such a good job, but I’m not using that verse.”

Emmett gasped and seemed to stop breathing.  He finally asked, “What?!”

I laughed, “Gotcha!”

Samuel said, “Aunt Jemima, what Attribute of God are we studying today?”

I laughed, “Samuel, we are looking at God making things new.  Arabella, do we need Mr. Dictionary?”

Arabella shrugged.  “I think that I know what new means.”

Easy, my husband, a.k.a. Mr. Dictionary, said, “Great!  I talked so much last week that I think I pulled a muscle.”

Arabella shrunk her head between her shoulders and giggled, “Glad I could help.”

Sophia (2 Corinthians 5:17) “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”

Sophia said, “This says that when we accept Jesus, we are a new creation.  But we still sin.  If we are this new creation, built to glorify God, why do we continue to mess things up?”

Easy said, “Sis, when you sin, do you feel satisfied?  Do you feel proud of yourself?”

Sophia said, “No, I hate that I have sinned.  I go to God to confess my sin.  And I wonder what inside me led me to do that.”

I took over, I didn’t want my husband to pull another muscle.  He is such a baby when he has the slightest pain. “Sophia, before you became a new creation, did you think twice about those sins?”

Sophia shrugged, “Not really.  Some of the things that I confess as sin now, I didn’t even know they were sin before the Holy Spirit guided me to think of a better way to do those things.”

I smiled, “As long as we are on this earth, we will be imperfect.  Just think of how arrogant we might be if we achieved perfection on this earth and the conscious thought that we had achieved perfection.  We would be insufferable.”

Sophia replied, “Like Blaise before he accepted Jesus?”

I winked, “Sophie, I was not part of the family then, so I will plead ignorance.”  Easy, with eyes closed, simply snickered.

Samuel (Hosea 4:10-11) “They will eat but not have enough; they will engage in prostitution but not flourish, because they have deserted the Lord to give themselves to prostitution; old wine and new wine take away their understanding.”

Samuel asked, “This passage talks about new and old, but it seems that the new is just as bad for us as the old.  So, where are you coming from, Aunt Jemima?”

I snickered, “I thought we needed to be careful about the ‘new’ whatever.  People come up with these new ideas these days that are really not new at all.  They are Satan’s old tricks with a new coat of paint.  There are a lot of so-called Christian churches out there that focus on earthly blessings.  I think we can have earthly blessings, but I do not think that God wants us to get comfortable.  If we get too comfortable, like my husband about now, we might drift off to sleep and miss the opportunity God has for us to share the Gospel.  This does not mean that God does not shower blessings on people, but if God expects that person to blessing others and glorify God, Most High, He will give those blessings to the one who is mature enough to take that blessing and bless others with it.  Take Aunt Pink for instance.  Easy’s Dad says she has a Zachaeus Syndrome.  She pays back fourfold if she thinks that she has harmed anyone.  Easy’s Mom is the faculty dean of the southern campus of the university and the initial donation for that complex came from Aunt Pink.  She had a few million dollars suddenly come into her possession a couple of years ago.  She paid her taxes, and then gave the rest to the Mission downtown, food banks, and scholarship funds.  She did not need that extra money.  And there are many people in this room that are benefiting from her donations.  But Aunt Pink gives God all the glory.  So, being rich is not bad, but making that the focus of a religion is very bad.”

Easy snorted, “I am not asleep, Jemima.  I am resting my eyes.”

I patted him on the arm, “Yes, dear, I know.”

Menzie (Mark 2:21-22) “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.”

Menzie said, “This was something I had to look up.  Even a few commentaries let me down.  They explained what the metaphors or parables meant in the spiritual, not the practical.  But a new patch on an old garment would make the tear worse.  The old garment has shrunk, but the new patch will shrink more than the old, making the tear worse than when you got started.  As for new wine, it has a bit of expansion that can happen.  Old wine skins have gotten stiff, while new wine skins are more pliable.  So, when the wine expands, the new wine would make the old wine skin burst.”

Angus chided, “Och, Lassie, you are not saying that your adoptive father is not pliable.  I will have you know that I am quite limber.  And I can handle my share of new wine.”

Missy snickered, “Yeah, pliable, for about twenty-three and a half hours per day, but that first thirty minutes after he wakes up is a different story.  Each day he wonders if anything will be able to move.  He sounds like a moose in heat.  Okay, I have no idea what a moose in heat sounds like, but if it’s a lot of moaning, he has that down pat.”

Angus grumbled, “Can I trade this sweet lass in for one that does not betray bedroom secrets?”

Dr. Ellie said, “I doubt if you will find one of those women in this room, maybe not in all of Tracy.”

I laughed, “Okay, thank you for explaining what those combinations of old and new do in this world, Menzie, but what did the commentaries tell you?”

Menzie snickered, “They said that Jesus was saying when we get our new creation, none of the old fits in with the new.  Like you were telling Soapy, we might sin, but that sin does not fit in with our nature.  We can’t just shrug that sin off as nothing because that is not what we now are.”

Emmett (Revelation 21:5) “He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’ Then he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ ”

Emmett smiled, “When you said what you did about our opening song, I thought I would end up getting this verse to read.  This is in the chapter that talks about the new heaven, the new earth, and the new Jerusalem.  We will all have resurrected perfect bodies then and Jesus will have made everything new.  And like what is said just before this verse, about God wiping away each tear, no pain, no crying.  It is just like the song we sang. My dear Sophia talked about our corruptible bodies still making mistakes, but God will give us incorruptible bodies that will no longer have that sin nature.  We will then be completely new, but with the soul of the old, the soul that never dies.”

I turned to Sophia, “Yep, I think he is warming up to his calling of being some kind of pastor.  That was pretty good.”

Sophie smiled, “Pretty good?  I thought it was great.”  She leaned over and kissed him.

Sally Mae shouted, “Break time for kissy kissy!”  All the couple stopped to smooch.

I huffed, “Can we keep a lid on the kissy kissy until after class?”

Margie said, “You are just jealous because your Hubbie is sound asleep!”

Easy snorted, “I am not asleep, Jemima.  I am resting my eyes.”

I patted him on the arm, “Yes, dear, I know.”

Easy (Isaiah 43:18-19) “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.  See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

Easy said, “See, I told you that I was not asleep.”

I said, “But you said nothing about what this verse means.”

Easy sighed, “Isaiah is basically prophesying about Jesus at this point.  Jesus is the ‘new thing.’  And over the course of Jesus’ ministry, His crucifixion, and His resurrection, and then the coming of the Holy Spirit, things changed. … A lot.  We have no need for a blood sacrifice.  Jesus paid that debt.  We do not have to worship at the temple.  We can worship anywhere in Spirit and in Truth.  While baptism was a thing in the Old Testament, it became a central thing in the modern church.  And while the Passover meal was around since the exodus, the meaning of the bread and wine are significant in the church today as symbols of the body and blood of Jesus.  And the part about making a way in the wilderness, Jesus wandered in the wilderness for forty days between His baptism and the beginning of His ministry. … And no, I am not asleep.  Fred and I worked with a couple of engineering graduate students last night into the wee hours of the morning.  We think that we have our mosquito cannon perfected.”

Arabella said, “Mosquito cannon?  Are you shooting a cannon at tiny mosquitoes?!”

Easy smiled, but still with his eyes closed, “Arabella finally spoke up.  I was wondering if you were even here.  Fred, explain what a mosquito is and what the cannon does.”

Fred said, “We have these tiny data collecting gadgets that we can release into a tornado.  They get picked up and then as they get lifted into the storm, they transmit data back to the Turtle.  Well, that only works if you station them in the tornado’s path.  But we have been toying with the idea of launching these critters into the air from near the tornado.  We asked everyone on the team what these things looked like, and we got a lot of responses: hummingbirds, flies as in dry flies for fishing, and mosquitoes.  A few ideas that would never get past the censors on the television channel.  Mosquitoes was the favorite.  So, we have a biodegradable package with a nose cone that has a parachute attached.  The cannon is more of a bottle rocket launch pad.  We can aim the cannon and as the fuel for the rocket is consumed, the little mosquitoes are released to do their thing.  Last night, we started with a couple of glitches, but with a quick design by Easy… Okay, he took out a knife and scored the next canister down the sides with a spiral cut … Anyway, the next shot distributed the data more evenly, and we got a lot closer to the target.”

Easy moaned, “And it went higher, too.”

Fred nodded, “Yeah, we got so carried away, we ran through every canister of mosquitoes that we had.  We got a lot of data.”

Margie snarled, “What data?  It was a beautiful night last night, no storm at all?”

Easy snickered, “Yeah, just a light breeze, but the mosquitoes transmitted the data back to us and the breeze scattered the mosquitoes, just like we thought the breeze would do.  We have high confidence that we can fire a cannon shot from a safe distance and get good data, not that the Turtle hasn’t been at ground zero before, but this cannon gives us a better safety margin.  And Fred, after we wake up from our naps this afternoon, our engineering friends are going to join us.  From the data, we know about where those mosquitoes landed.  We’re going on a scavenger hunt.”

Fred nodded, “Cool!”

Wilma asked, “Can the film crew join you?”

Dr. Ellie said, “I think the more eyes on the prize and we’ll find more skeeters.  Oh, I mean mosquitoes.”

Sally Mae laughed, “Darrell, Mary Jo, and I knew what you meant.  We could make it a Sunday school class project and have a picnic.”

I spoke up, “Thinking of making things new, that is a new idea that I like!  Let’s all meet here about three this afternoon in work clothes.  Anyone that is not working, no attendance will be taken.  This might be fun.”

Rosie asked, “Johnny Jacks is the music minister where I go to church, where Poached and Callie attend.  He never gets to come to the class.  Can he come along?”

Dr. Ellie waved a hand, “The more the merrier.  Besides, we need to see if this Mr. Johnny Jacks is real or a figment of your imagination.”

I asked, “Can we get back to the subject at hand?  I have a few verses left, but we have time for one more.”

Rosie (Isaiah 65:17) “See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.”

Rosie said, “I have always pictured my grandparents looking down and seeing that I have finally made something out of my life.  I have heard a lot of preachers talk about having memories of loved ones and being reunited with them.  Do we all just get amnesia?”

Joseph mused, “The idea of remembering people, the good times, and other things has been argued, and no one knows.  What we do know is that whatever happens, we will not be disappointed, unless Jesus is not in our hearts.  That’s another story.”

I smiled, “Is Grannie Fannie behind me?”

Grannie Fannie snickered, “You know I am right behind you, Jemima”

I asked, “Grannie Fannie, can you lead us in our benediction?”

Grannie Fannie (Romans 15:13) “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Lauren ran up to Menzie and Samuel, “Mommie!  Daddy!  The buses!  The bus driver is here.  And Liam, Lympie, and Ellie Rain are with her.”  Then, she ran to Grannie Fannie and hugged her.

Brooke came over and got Stormie’s carrier.  “Hi, Stormie.  You didn’t go out and play with your Daddy did you?”

Stormie laughed.

Credits

The nature of the blog from Sweet to the Soul Ministries gives only one verse.  I used various searches and cross references for the other verses.  I used just a few sources.  I changed the search criteria a few times.

The idea of mosquitoes was fueled by tornado movies and the hurricane chasers.  Tornado chasers use ground-deployed devices that can be picked up by the tornado, rocket deployed devices, and drone deployed devices.  When I first wrote about the Turtle, it had a special window to deploy a drone, but I never wrote that into a storm chase.  In a recent non-storm chase, Jemima and Mary used the drone as a spy device.  So, the mosquito cannon may be something on the drawing board, to use the rocket deployment device, but with a higher accuracy.

Here are Ken Canedo singing See, I Make All Things New.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.