Mercy

Matthew 5:7, 6:12-15, 18:35, James 2:13

My Heavenly Father,

I find myself in constant need of Your mercy.  My errors and failures place me in need of others’ mercy too.  But when I feel wronged by others, I am reluctant to extend the gift of mercy that I so desperately require.  Your word teaches me that mercy is a two way street–a highway of humility.
Mercy does not demand the pity of sympathy from me.  It does not demand that I feel sorry for another.  I am not called upon to experience a wave of emotional concern.  I am called to something much deeper.  You are calling me to an empathy that demands that I take the perspective of the other. You are calling me to an identification with the other that transcends my own prejudice, bias, and point of view.  You are calling me to think his thoughts.  You are calling me to feel his feelings.  You are calling me to mercy.

Mercy.  Surely this is what You think and feel toward me.  Your mercy reached past creation–past flinging worlds into space.  Your mercy demanded that You crawl into skin like mine, become one of us.  Mercy demanded identification.  Mercy demanded incarnation.  The Word that created infinity crept into a woman’s womb and out into the world.  You deliberately identify with me in order to become my Savior.  Empathy. Mercy.

You could have looked upon me from outside my experience.  You could have stared at me through the window separating time from eternity.  But You shattered the glass.  You burst through the wall dividing humanity from divinity.  You became flesh, and chose to identify with me!  Mercy.

What demands do your act of mercy place upon me?  I hear You calling me to the same sort of mercy that You exemplify.  Help me to extend mercy to others through kindness.  Help me to give others the mercy they need, rather than the mercy I find easiest to give.  Help me to give others the forgiveness they need, rather than the conditional forgiveness that I find easiest to give.
Mercy.  Compassionate empathy.

“O the bliss of the man who gets right inside other people, until he can see with their eyes, think with their thoughts, feel with their feelings, for he who does that will find others do the same for him, and will know that that is what God in Jesus Christ has done”  (William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, vol. 1, p. 100).

In the Name of my merciful God,
Amen.