Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

At this point Festus interrupted Paul’s defense. “You are out of your mind, Paul!” he shouted. “Your great learning is driving you insane.”
“I am not insane, most excellent Festus,” Paul replied. “What I am saying is true and reasonable.

• Acts 26:24-25

“Webster was born in 1758 and graduated from Yale during the Revolutionary War. He tried teaching but failed. He opened a school, but it closed. He became a lawyer but struggled to make a living. He fell in love twice but was rejected. He longed to become Washington’s official biographer, but that job went to someone else. …
“On October 26 1789, Noah married Rebecca Greenleaf, a woman absolutely perfect for him. The only threat to their happiness was his massive debt and his failure to find a life’s work. In 1793, they moved to New York City to start a newspaper, but for years it, too, failed. Just as the tide turned and the paper showed signs of success, Webster lost interest. His mind was seized by another dream dash the compiling of a Dictionary of American English. …
“Webster worked at a round table in his second floor study from sunrise until 4:00 in the afternoon, usually standing while reading and writing, using a quill pen and pad, and surrounded by reference works. But the mental strain, financial worries, and constant criticism nearly broke him. That is, until he came to faith in Jesus Christ.”

• Robert J. Morgan, 100 Bible Verses That Made America

In my recent trip to visit the grandchildren, the oldest of them went with me to Nashville, to sell used books and games.  One of the books that I purchased in return was 100 Bible Verses That Made America by Robert J. Morgan.  As we approach the 250^th anniversary of the birth of the USA, I thought I would do a condensed mini-series on some of these verses, four posts per week for a few weeks – maybe not all 100 verses.

I was six years old, when my father’s mother, Mammy, a retired school marm, gave me a Bible, but it was really a Bible Story book, approved by Queen Elizabeth II before she was the queen, but published after she became queen.

This memory is important to this story only because Mammy wanted me to have this “Bible” to be the first book that I read.  But I had only finished kindergarten.  I could not read.  Mammy instructed me to read what I could and have a dictionary next to the book that I am reading.  If I did not know a word, I was to look it up in the dictionary.  But in those days, I could look up the word, and the definition was filled with words that I did not know either.

Yet, there have been authors, one being Rex Stout who wrote the Nero Wolfe mysteries, where I have needed to place the dictionary next to the book, even as an adult.

I had a Noah Webster Dictionary at one time, but now I have the Webster’s New World Dictionary and the American Heritage Dictionary, the first edition that contained the “naughty words.”  Yes, I bought it to show a moment of independent thought, and yes, to irk my mother.

Of course with the internet handy, we have a text editor, grammar checker, thesaurus, and dictionary at hand with only needing a few mouse clicks.

But picture this unmitigated failure of a human being.  He had brain power, but nothing worked out for him.

As I type this, I am thinking, ‘Been there.  Done that.’

But then his daughters went to church.  They heard Rev. Moses Stuart, an influential pastor during the Second Great Awakening.  They accepted Christ.  They begged their father to join them, And Noah Webster was moved by Rev. Stuart’s sermon.  He requested a private meeting.  Even then, he struggled with the gospel until one day he was brought to his knees.  He begged God to forgive him.

He became extremely enthusiastic in his new found beliefs, so much so that his brother was concerned about Noah’s sanity.  He wrote a response to one of his brother’s letters.  He used Acts 16:24-25 as his text to explain that his enthusiasm was based in truth and reason.

As Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians, he says that the message of the cross is foolishness to the lost.  But to a believer, it is life itself.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.