lamentations 30 : love ?

Today Nikki and I played tennis.

We chased the balls, hit them around a bit, and sweat a lot! Hoping to get better at it.

It's our new committment, to take one afternoon a week and spend it on some fun exercise...adding a little refreshment to the scurry of life here in our little corner of the world. It was fun today... we provided some amuzement for the "regulars" and finished off in the pool to cool down. I guess it's one step for us, although it feels like a big one. We both think, a healthy one.

See... we just gotta beat it the 'ugh'.

I've tried to describe it in more understandable terms in conversation with a few people since I last wrote. This past week since I've arrived back, it's felt like I've been at the circus. (Well not exactly, but bear with me.) And at the centre of the circus ring is a roaring, RAGING lion, an empty, hungry, mercyless beast with a hollow leg. A bottomless pit? It will need far more than me to be filled and satisfied.

And here I am, very free to choose the extent to which I engage in this circus entertainment (although it feels more like the Roman gladiator games), I stand on the edge. I can prance around, walk around, dance around, and the lion rages, somehow confined to the centre of the ring. I can carefully step across the ring, enter into its space, but still keep my distance. I can step in, and step out again. I can more bravely approach, gaining the approval of the crowds...and slink back again as if to tease. However, if I were to dive right in, engage with this wild raging lion as I'm expected to, i might surely and very simply.... be consummed.

I wonder if this picture helps... to read between the lines.

It's so easy here, in day-to-day living, to allow the countless needs to overwhelm, and to consume; to order my day, to dictate my plans and over-rule my oringinal job assignment.

There have been times, when I know I have become more like a slave to the raging lion, or riped apart by him, and rendered 'not so useful' by the circus Master.

I was reading yesterday and came across a precious promise. The king james version struck me.

"It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because HIS compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is THY faithfulness." Lamentations 3:22-23

His compassions fail not. His are un-exhaustable.

And so while I know that in order to dance with this pacing lion (and not be eaten alive), it'll take tactic, careful planning and lots of deliberate time with the Master...I know that God's mercies will not fail the people I have grown to love.

And this means that I can sleep easier, step lighter... and I can even play a game or two.