Mercy

I heard this song on my car radio a few days ago, it’s called “When We Fall Apart.” As someone who recently lost my dad and whose brother passed away a year before that, and then our mom left us in 2017. Well, it’s been a tough several years. My sister now mourns the loss of her husband, too. Death is a part of life, we hear in dispassionate tones. We read it as a mundane fact. But while that is true, death was never supposed to be part of life. Life is meant to be eternal.

So Jesus came to give us that eternal life. He says, “I came that you might have life and have it abundantly.” He also says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” He died and rose again, and then ascended into Heaven. All so we might follow Him and live with the Lord forever. I don’t know if many people realize this truth any more. Without it, there is no hope, I’m sad to say. That is the tragedy of it. And so those of us who know, who have that certain hope, have to tell everyone else. So they can have this hope and experience this Divine Love.

In the song, the storyteller says that mercy is a gift. And I believe that’s true. He says it’s a blessing and not a curse. I’m sure that’s true and yet it can seem to the merciful like a curse. Like Jesus, who wants to gather all the lost together like “a mother hen” gathers her chicks to protect them from death, that’s how those who have mercy feel. But with this mercy that is concerned for each person’s soul and what their everlasting life will look like, we find that we are anxious for those who don’t know, for those we can’t reach. It’s like watching a sinking boat from dry land and being unable to save the people slipping under the waves.

Such helplessness can be debilitating. But then the merciful remember that we can pray. So, when nothing else seems possible to help the lost, the hurt, the insecure, all those ignorant of God’s love, we can always pray. What do we pray for? The conversion of souls. With that prayer we ask that the grace of God touch the mind and heart of the those who do not know who God is.

And, in the mean time, while we wait for their repentance, which can happen at any time, we continue to live our lives for the glory of the God who made us. We can continue to thank God for our lives and with our lives, for we could not have been at all. But here we are. Now then, in the words of Jesus the Lord, “Rise, let us be on our way.”