Circles

Last night, I had kind of welcome message on my answering machine. Greg called to say that he and Mark were not running this morning. Consequently, I slept in some this morning and that was nice for a change of pace. However, by about 9:00, it was time to get moving and go for a bike ride. My journey led me south on Fir to 12B, through Bourbon, to County Line Road and back towards Bremen. Over on County Line Road, I barely missed hitting a mouse. This mouse was a sad little thing running in a near perfect circle over and and over again. I'm not sure what it was doing other than running in circles. It was actually pretty sad. Inevitably it will encounter its demise and be plastered to the road only to be rinsed away by the rains and returned back to the earth. Writing this now, it dawned on me that riding bike is also similar in some ways to this mouse. You have to start and end in the same place - usually anyway. Maybe it is not quite so bleak as the mouse, though, because one can improve endurance, stamina - you get the point.

At any rate, I was reminded of a point that Jim brings up pretty regularly:

Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I also thought about how often I find myself running around in circles - "fixing" things for the third, fourth, fifth times, trying to find my keys or sunglasses, letting anxieties and frustrations cycle back through time and and time again.

Yet, Jesus offers this seemingly simple way out of these circles:

"Come, follow me." (Matthew 4:19a)

Peace,

Todd