New

The first verses that come to mind this morning are Lamentations 3:22-23 “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.” The reason is because it is again raining here today. When you have experienced long periods of drought, it becomes a habit to get jumpy after more than a few days of dry weather. So I’m thankful that God has been merciful and sent us more rain.

However, I am being made aware that maybe we stereotype what we believe “mercies” are. Do we think of mercies as always being good things, such as rain? Maybe mercies are actually the dry spells in the weather, or our lives.

At this point I am reminded of that saying: “Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind” which I use when it is necessary to say “No” to children. We know that not every request our children present to us are good for them and so it’s important for us to say that dreaded word “No”. Jesus says in Luke 11:13 “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” We know that sometimes giving good gifts actually means withholding things from our children that may not be bad in themselves but inappropriate at their age and development. We have some idea of the consequences of giving some things to our children too early.

Now God knows us much better, He also knows what the consequences will be simply because He can see the future and has planned it. So maybe those things we don’t like might be new mercies that we just cannot see yet.