Lord Have Mercy

What an empowering and humbling experience it is to be a knowing recipient of mercy. Empowering in the sense that it really comes across as a release – as a second chance to live life where it may have been curtailed or in otherwise justifiably inhibited. Humbling in the sense that you are receiving something from someone in a position to justly make your life more miserable but instead you are given the opposite.

The Bible suggests that we are all recipients of the mercies of God. Faithfully, day after day, He offers new mercies to us. In a very real way, despite naysayers suggesting to the contrary, our lives as we live it at the moment, shows the greatness of the mercies of God. You may consider what you don’t have. When you compare that to what you should get and how that has been averted to afford time to recognise and pay due reverence, what we don’t have appears almost irrelevant. That doesn’t even begin to address what we have in comparison to others.

Whilst thinking of that, the deal about following Jesus sends a curveball our way. (If I may engage in baseball parlance albeit briefly.) For from the beginning, Jesus clearly states that those who obtain mercy are those who are full of it. That is to say you get it, if you’re full of it. Almost as though it works on the generosity principle – generous people always have something to give, because they love giving all they have. Likewise those who extend mercy really get it. By really get it, I mean they receive it and understand what they have received.

It remains one of the most challenging and liberating areas of my walk with Christ to be merciful. Often I catch myself expressing a harsh thought or remark and stop myself in the light of whatit means to bemerciful. Every day I get the chance to show mercy and how I do that can be the difference between someone misunderstood feeling valued and loved as opposed to their insecurities hardened and no progress to libery being made for that person. Often when I hear people glibly use the term ‘Lord, have mercy’, I know he does and will, but His question is do we?

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd