Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him,
    on those whose hope is in his unfailing love,
to deliver them from death
    and keep them alive in famine.

• Psalm 33:18-10

In times of disaster they will not wither;
    in days of famine they will enjoy plenty.

• Psalm 37:19

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

• Matthew 6:25-27

Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

• John 6:26-29

A month ago, give or take a few days, I visited the grandchildren in Tennessee.  They have five dogs.  The last three are a litter of beagle-mix puppies that arrived on the doorstep of family in the country.  The best place for them was right there in the country. But they gave the dogs, that were nearly starved to death, to my son.  He has a heart for bringing in strays.  All his dogs are from the pound or direct rescues.

But due to the starvation, probably abandoned on the side of the road in farming territory, these three dogs are very neurotic.  They are hounds.  They need to be outside, but the chickens dominate the fenced area in the back yard.

Being natural outdoor dogs, one of the three is not potty trained, although roughly a year and a half old.  They are using a scent spray which encourages this dog to go, otherwise, she would hold it until she got back into the house.  The only boy out of the five dogs has mistakes continuously, when he gets excited or scared, which is often.  But the solid brown dog is doing pretty good.

My son said that the only one to be more than skin and bones when they got them was the brown one.

But when mealtime comes, they dive for the cup that is delivering the food to the bowl.  If they can get the assigned grandchild to spill the food, the grandchild might scoop another bowl. That means more now and some later as they sniff around the pantry areas (mostly wire mesh shelving).

But the oldest of the dogs had a keen sense for the refrigerator door opening.  Anna is always staring at me when I close the refrigerator door.  If I do not have a slice of cheese, I am in trouble.  She never begs.  She stands and stares.

But the little brown beagle learned over the course of the nine days that I was down there to stand back.  As I handed Anna the cheese, she would leap over the much larger dog to steal the cheese away from Anna.

I was wise to that, and I made sure Anna got the “cheese tax.”

But this is what starvation did to those dogs.  They fought over the food.  They had no trust that the next meal would come.  But they have been with my son for almost a year.  How long does it take to establish trust?

But aren’t we about the same?  Especially if you have been hungry for long stretches of time, you might fight for each crumb, thinking it might be your last crumb ever.

I don’t know if these three dogs will ever trust my son completely.  But do we trust God completely?

We might read the Scripture above from Matthew 6 or the similar passage in Luke and think, ‘Sure, God feeds the birds, but what about my family?’

At what point is it no longer a memory of an empty stomach?  When does it become a lack of faith issue?

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.