Psalm 4:8 King James Version
8 I will both lay me down in peace, and
sleep: for Thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety.
I love the majestic English of the King James Version of the
Bible, don’t you? I read Psalm 4 this morning, and it reminded me of an
incident in our Tanzanian experience and also of Rose, our fearless leader, who
assigned us the prompt: “Write about the blessings you have in your life.”
During this NaNoWriMo month, I am trying to whip my Ikizu Memoirs into
final or at least semi-final form. I am on chapter 53 of 58 planned chapters.
Sylvia is my editor, and she recently sent me chapter 41 entitled Lion
Encounter.
On Sunday night we were camping with our group in the UNESCO
World Heritage Site, Serengeti National Park. In our tent we had our
one-year-old daughter and the three Conway children, too. I awoke in the
predawn to the sound of something dropping onto the roof of our tent. Deciding
it must be a small branch from the tree we had pitched under, I turned over to
go back to sleep. Suddenly, George’s shout: “Get out of here!” from the next
tent, shocked me into action. Grabbing a flashlight, I jumped up and raced to
the door of the tent, unzipped it, and shone the flashlight out into the
darkness.
I stopped dead. Frozen. Not ten feet were the shining eyes
of two lions staring back at me. There was nothing between me and two lions! They
lay between me and the campfire. Time stretched out. The lions watched me but
made no move. I remained still. Slowly, I swung the light of the flashlight in
a wider arc. There were at least seven lions around our campfire, staring at
me. Their eyes roved a bit to my right. There was George, clad only in his
briefs, standing frozen in his doorway—and more lions.
I yelled to wake up the others in the group. Two teenagers
sleeping in an old Land Rover looked out their windows. They started the Land
Rover, and it backfired into action. All the noise was disturbing the lions’
tranquility. Slowly they got up and stretched. Regally, thirteen lions filed
out of our campsite. There was no hurry, no obvious fear in their attitude, maybe
only a bit of disgust.
No one got any more sleep. When daylight arrived and we got
up to eat breakfast, on the roof of our tent we found two dusty lion
footprints. Conversation centered around whether or not the lions were hungry.
Two or three miles down the track towards the park headquarters in Seronera, we
came upon our thirteen lions, busily polishing off two Thompson Gazelles. That
ended the discussion about the lions’ lack of hunger.
This morning, my gratitude extends from not being devoured
by lions then to an almost complete Ikizu Memoir now. Rejoice
with me!
How grateful we are, Lord, that we can lie down and sleep
because of the assurance that You make us dwell in safety.
