“…his compassions they fail not. They are new every morning:…”
Those words are the confident words that Jeremiah wrote right in the middle of the pessimistic book of Lamentations in the Hebrew Bible.
“They are new every morning” takes on a different meaning at my stage of life. Did I do that yesterday? Did I already answer that letter, or have I been composing it in my mind so often that it seems like I wrote it? Did I unplug the hotplate before I left the house? (One of the two burners has the fault of turning itself on and off all day long if I don’t pull the plug). Do I have my cell phone? While walking down the hill to our mailbox, “did I bring the letters I intended to mail?”
I have lists and protective habits that help. I have sticky notes to put on the door, if I remember. I turn the thyroid extract pill bottle upside down and put it at the back of the counter after I’ve taken my pill. I move it to the front at night before I go to bed. And I think I have forgotten that medication only one time, when I forgot to take it with me when spending the night in my brother’s vacation condo in Solana Beach. For years I have kept a list of letters I mail, but I don’t always remember to write the names down. Writing letters is one of my very favorite hobbies. I wonder how many people have received two copies of my newsletter this year. Not many, because I haven’t sent out very many. But it may be about to happen.
