God is Merciful
Do you remember "mercy." It was that game that mean kids on the playground would play where they would grab your hands and bend them back until you cried out "Mercy"! It was called "uncle" in the movie A Christmas Story. This picture is humorous, but it does point out a problem with our sense of understanding the concept of mercy. Mercy is a kindness toward someone who is totally guilty, wrong, or weak and unable to help themselves. Mercy is compassion and kindness towards those who are in dire need. In the Holman Dictionary of the Bible, mercy is described as, "an action taken by the strong towards the weak, the rich towards the poor, the insider towards the outsider, those who have towards those who have not."
About the best picture of mercy that I can think of is when you have a broken tooth or some other such pain and you finally get to the doctor and he administers the thing that takes away your excruciating pain. I was once in a head-on collision and felt a great pain in my chest, which was a broken sternum. The EMT gave me a shot of this thing called morphine, and whoosh!, the pain was gone, for a little while anyway. Of course, there are greater pains than the mere physical ones. Many of us have experienced great rejection, grief, and loss in our lives. We have been in great need of mercy. Mercy comes to us in large and small doses. A college professor knows your real potential and allows you to re-take a test that you failed and would have ended your career hopes. A spouse forgives an offense and stays to make a life worth living for the both of you. Your boss stands behind you even though you lost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars on your last project, because he really believes in you.
Jesus painted a couple of beautiful pictures of mercy. The first was that of the Good Samaritan. You probably know the story by heart, right? Well, that might be a problem, so let's reset the story for a modern audience. A man is robbed, beaten and left for dead along the side of the road. A preacher comes by and passes along. Then a Peace Corps executive walks by and then crosses the street to avoid the mess, because he has a meeting to go to and can't be late. Then a lowly McDonald's employee comes by, and loads the poor man into the back of her twenty-five year old Toyota truck, and maxes-out her credit cards to pay his hospital bills. She risks her own security, being an illegal alien, to visit him daily in the hospital until she is sure he is well.
The other picture of God's mercy is of the story of the Prodigal Son. You probably know that story, too, right? A young man goes off and squanders his share of the family inheritance on partying and a wild lifestyle, and finally comes crawling back for food and shelter. How many of us would be like his older brother, ready with the shaming I-told-you-so's? But this Father is waiting continually for his son to come to his senses and come home, and as soon as the boy shows up his father restores all of the trust and stature that he had in the beginning. Total restoration for a total disaster: that is mercy!
It is God's nature to be merciful. He covered Adam and Eve with clothing after they felt ashamed in the garden. He provided a lamb for the sacrifice for Abraham's son, Isaac. He protected Cain, who had committed the first murder in history, by placing a mark of protection upon him. After the slave woman Hagar was rejected, God opened up a stream of water for her and her son, Ishmael, and promised him a great inheritance. He watched over Jacob and Joseph as they wandered through many situations and prospered them. Even though the children of Israel had seen great miracles in Egypt, when they got to the mountain they made idols of gold, and God showed His mercy by sparing them and leading them to a promised land, by feeding them daily with manna, and by leading with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Psalm 145:8 states that, "The LORD is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and great in mercy." He gives us what we don't deserve. A new and living way and even life eternal. Ephesians 2:4-7 says, "But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ so that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus."
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