Mercy

Mercy. It’s heavy on my heart this month. I’m desperate for it. Not just in the Spirit realm, but here, on earth. I know about the fresh mercies, born each day, leaving me unconsumed, that the prophet Jermaiah spoke of. I feel it each morning when I repeat my daily mantra: “Sufficient it is each day therein, life is still choosing me.” I feel it when I inhale and exhale; as my toes wiggle and fingers move, new mercies each day. I feel it. I need more of it. As I look back over my time on this earth, I need just a little more mercy. Not from my Christ, who freely gave it at the Cross, but from the people who met an unhealed, broken, scared, and hurting person unable to give the mercy he's so desperate for. I find myself giving mercy a lot these days but that's solely because I'm thirsty for it. 

We don’t talk enough about it. This yearning for mercy. I know I did not talk a lot about it. Even when every prayer was bookended with: “Lord, have mercy;” or “have mercy;” and, when things were too heavy to travel out of my mouth, a simple groan: “mercy.”  Earlier this month I found myself in my kitchen, making breakfast, repeating: “Mercy.” I couldn’t shake it. In the shower, calling out for it; putting on my clothes talking about: I need just a little more mercy, God; getting in my carpool, answering “how you doin?” with, “needing some mercy.” Sitting in my office having to find a sermon, or ten, that would, hopefully, land something in my Spirit, to subside, or for just a moment subdue this longing. I found a few but all it did was increase my appetite, all I heard was how freely Christ gives it and how we’re commanded to live like we’re dependent on it. Mercy started to follow me like a shadow, put me in situations where I would have to give it, and even more, where I’d have to seek it out. Read More