Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

This is what the Lord says:
“Let not the wise boast of their wisdom
    or the strong boast of their strength
    or the rich boast of their riches,
but let the one who boasts boast about this:
    that they have the understanding to know me,
that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness,
    justice and righteousness on earth,
    for in these I delight,”
declares the Lord.

• Jeremiah 9:23-24

I read a nostalgia post on social media and my mind went back to the empty lot next to my mother’s mother’s house.  There had been three lots.  PawPaw took a one room house on the middle lot and added one room at a time, never on the same level, leaky roof, a number of other issues.  They kept building around the indoor bathroom, a luxury when it was built.  They had the indoor bathroom before they added the kitchen, using a cast iron wood-burning stove before then.

But my parents built a modern home next door.  My aunt, who owned the other lot moved to Florida.  So, I basically grew up on that empty lot.

We played baseball with a tennis ball.  We thought that if we hit a home run with a baseball and it hit Mr. Henry’s windows, it was going to break one.  Maybe a tennis ball wouldn’t break the window.  In the one time someone hit a window, it did not break.

I was the oldest of the neighborhood children.  Then came another boy across the street a year younger, then another one down the street yet another year younger.  The rest were little kids, but we had a good team.  We fielded pretty well.  We could hit the ball and keep it in play.  None of us could pitch in the strike zone for love of money, but we swung at anything that was close anyway.

I think the boy down the street, and I were the only ones to hit the ball over Mr. Henry’s roof.  Just about everybody hit the ball under his house which meant someone had to take the snake stick with him when he crawled under the house to retrieve the ball.

But one day, one of the kids (lower elementary school aged) hit the ball to mid-left field, but it was over the left fielder’s head.  On the second bounce, the tennis ball went underneath a passing motorist’s car.  The ball would bounce up, hit the bottom of the moving car and then go for another bounce.  This man’s car was a tennis ball dribbling champion.  The ball was being propelled forward by the car itself as it bounced between the car and the street.  It must have been making a racket because the guy pulled over to find out what the sudden noise was.

Of course, the ball rolled past the car and stopped at the curb, unseen by the motorist.  The guy kicked each of his tires.  He got down on his knees and looked for a tree limb or other debris that might have gotten caught in the suspension.  Nothing!

My friends turned to me, being a year older than the next oldest. “Aren’t you going down there to retrieve our ball?  It’s the last one.”

I said, “If I went down there right now, the driver would see the ball and know what was going on.  I’m going to wait this one out.”

The driver, about a block down the street, scratched his head, got in the car, and started to drive away, picking up speed when he learned the noise had stopped.

“Discretion is the better part of valor.”

• William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1

On that day on the empty lot next to MawMaw’s house, I had no idea about that line in the Shakespeare play, but that day, I lived it.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.