Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

My soul is downcast within me;
    therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
    the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.

• Psalm 42:6

Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

• John 20:28

The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”

• Deuteronomy 31:8

Why, my soul, are you downcast?
    Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
    for I will yet praise him,
    my Savior and my God.

• Psalm 42:5

“Whenever I feel discouraged, it’s essential for me to spend time remembering You. Thinking about who You are – my Lord and my God, my Savior and Shepherd, the Friend who will never leave me – lifts me up and brightens my perspective. I’m grateful that You are fully aware of every aspect of my life, including all my thoughts and feelings. Everything aft about me is important to You! As I relax in Your loving Presence, help me recall the many ways You’ve taken care of me, providing just what I need. I’ll try to thank you for each blessing that comes to mind.”

• Sarah Young, Jesus Listens

When we are at our lowest, we sometimes have the best perspective of who God is and how He helps us.

Too often we pray in generalities.  Too often we wait for the big thing.

But at the microscopic level, God’s miracles are happening every day and people dismiss them as “science at work.”  And somewhere, maybe next door or maybe on the far side of the globe, God is orchestrating something that will change your life forever.

I have written before about how God knew what He was doing when the civil war in Indonesia caused my wife’s family to flee the country.  I was growing up on a turkey farm in Mississippi.  When we lost the farm a few years later, my wife’s family had moved from Indonesia to the Netherlands to New York City and just as their visa was about to run out, her father got a job in El Paso, TX.  We were still over 1000 miles apart.  And if I had not gotten a military commitment during the Vietnam War and only one job offer to pay the bills during my graduate school deferment, we would have still never met.  There were so many personal, national, and worldwide events that placed us in the same place at the same time.  And neither one of us wanted to date anyone anymore, ever, until my landlady and her husband, my wife’s friend at work, talked us into just one date.  Strange how that was one of the few things that we had in common.  We were done with the dating game.

So, we have so much to thank God for on the small level and the large level.  And all the other levels in between.

So, things might not be going perfectly today, but think of the last time that everything went perfectly and was sustained at that perfection for a month.  …  Never?  Then maybe a week?  A day? …  No.  This world is broken.  If you think the last hour went by perfectly, you might have overlooked something.

But what we should never overlook is that God is by our side, hovering over us, and within us every second of the day.  And there are so many things to praise Him for and thank Him for.  We’ll never have the time to mention them all.

As the often sung song goes:

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.  Praise Him all creatures here below; Praise Him above, ye heavenly hosts; Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Amen.

• Thomas Ken, the Doxology

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.