Tuesday, October 04, 2011

SCANDALOUS MERCY

God shouldn’t offer us His unending love and devotion, but He does. He shouldn’t pour out His daily morning mercies on all mankind, but He does.

This, I think, is why so many of us miss the Kingdom of God. We have yet to have our perspective shifted from the one we were born into. We need to have eyes to see the Kingdom.

In Micah 6:8 the scriptures tell us that ”(God) has shown you, O man, what is good, and what is required of you; to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Doing Justice is hard enough without learning to love Mercy. Why? Because Mercy is when someone who doesn’t deserve a blessing gets one anyway. We hate that. Unless of course the person receiving that undeserved gift of mercy is us. That’s totally acceptable. But when that sinner repents after a lifetime of wasted selfishness we’re not usually the first ones to cheer. When that angry, judgmental person who lives next door to us wins the lottery we do not rejoice over their good fortune. When the hateful, self-important bigot we work with is handed a raise, we do not rush to congratulate him. Mercy is only good when it’s deposited into our account. Or, at least we act that way sometimes.

Yet, if we understand that God is sovereign and that He is in control of all things, we can rejoice whenever someone who does not deserve a blessing gets a big fat gift from God dropped into their lap. We can learn to love mercy if we truly understand that we are also among those who do not in any way deserve the daily blessings we receive from God’s hand.

Jesus is for losers. The Kingdom is for the poor, the blind, the broken, the weak, the hopeless, the helpless, and the sick. This is good news for all of us sinners.

"And now I know the secret that only losers keep, and I wallow in the hopeful tears that every finder weeps." - Finder's Weep

-kg

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