14 March 2022

Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:10)

Who are we as followers of Christ? We are people who’ve received mercy. It’s that simple.

And we mustn’t make it more complex--most of religion goes wrong in making it more complex. This is where we begin and where we stay.

We may fail, in a dozen everyday ways and even occasionally in some terrible ways, but what God wants to do more than anything is forgive us, restore us, and strengthen us--to show us mercy.

This prayer must be ours…

Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin. (Psalm 51:1-2)

“Have mercy on me, O God. …Cleanse me from my sin.”

“Forgive us our debts,” as Jesus taught us to pray.

When these become the prayers we breathe, then we have a proper view of ourselves, and whole new ways of interacting with this world become possible.

At the beginning of His sermon on the mount, Jesus comes at this from another angle: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” (Matthew 5:7) We need mercy. And having received it, we must show it, must extend and express the mercy we’ve experienced.

One of the most basic markers of a follower of God is being merciful.

“If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.” (Matthew 6:14-15)

We need to let that sink in for a moment: “if you refuse…” Such refusal means we have closed off something in us we can’t afford to close off.

I don’t earn his mercy by being merciful, but I experience it most fully and truly when I am.

James, as per usual, puts it more bluntly:

There will be no mercy for those who have not shown mercy to others. But if you have been merciful, God will be merciful when he judges you. (James 2:13)

The degree to which we’re open to give grace and mercy is the same degree to which we’re open to receive. They work on the same mechanism.

We can think we’re wide open to receive even while we’re being tight and narrow in our giving. We kid ourselves. They are one and the same opening, one and the same heart.

There’s no getting around it: in Christ’s Kingdom there is no receiving without giving. We’re meant to be rivers, not reservoirs.

Who are we? Receivers of grace and mercy. And that mercy is limited never by God’s generous giving of it, but only in our unwillingness to share it.

GOD’S TRUTH PERSISTS; NEVER STOP PURSUING IT…

“I know the power obedience has of making things easy which seem impossible.”

Teresa of Avila

FROM MY READING…

Susan Cain’s book on “the power of introverts” is a great read for anyone seeking to better understand one-third to one-half of all humans. As an introvert myself, I appreciate her robust and highly researched redefinitions of what strong leadership, healthy relationships, and effective communication can look like, often at their best.