Mercy
Grace to
you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Amen.
When
we pray for God to give us an increase of faith, hope and love, we are
admitting that we fail in faith; that our hopes are often wrong-headed; and
that our love is self-serving. Our prayer admits that we too often take matters
into our own hands without patiently trusting the Lord to be our defense; that
our hopes and desires are set on gratifying our passions and what we believe is
fair; that love for others—especially those who hurt us or hate us—often gives
way to anger and hatred.
And
so we pray precisely because we do not love what He commands; because we confess that, apart from His
endless mercy, we will not obtain the inheritance, the kingdom, the life He
promises. And we pray because, by fulfilling our flesh, we have sinned against
the Spirit. And we pray because we give into hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions,
dissensions, heresies, and envy;
and because we sincerely desire to partake of the fruit of the Spirit which is
love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,
self-control.
Our prayer must always be, “Lord,
have mercy.” For if the Lord does not have mercy, then faith, hope and love
vanish. For who will want to believe in a God who treats us like we treat each
other? Who wants to hope for God’s justice to be as strict and quick as ours?
And who can love a God whose love is as self-centered as ours?
So it is the Lord’s mercy we seek
when we pray—a mercy that does not deal with us as we deserve; a mercy that
overrides His anger and ours; a mercy that squelches our meanness and gives
birth to true brotherly love; a mercy that betters us; and most of all, a mercy
that gives us an increase of faith, hope and love.
But our ingratitude and even our abuse
of the Lord’s costly mercy does not stop His mercy; it does not turn Him
against us. He does not undo what He in mercy has done. The lack of
thankfulness of the nine lepers who did not return did not bring back their
leprosy; they were still healed. They tasted the Lord’s mercy, although they
did not savor it.
But to those who return in praise
and thanksgiving; to those who sacrifice their notions, passions and ambitions;
to those who offer the Lord all they are and all they have in appreciation for
the mercy they have received—they receive from the Lord not only mercy but also
His blessing; not just the things that make for this life, but also the things
that usher us safely into the Kingdom of heaven. This leper who returns, this
Samaritan, cares less about being certified “clean” than he does about
worshiping the Lord Jesus who healed him. So he returned, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his
face at Jesus’ feet, giving Him thanks. There, by that humble act, you see
the Holy Spirit at work. There you see a man who confesses that he is
undeserving of any gift from God and who begins to live from the mercy he has
received. For living in the Lord’s mercy begins not by doing for others, but by
receiving more and more from the Lord’s hand, to partake in the love, the
forgiveness, the compassion, the strength, and the mercy that Our Lord Jesus is
and gives.
And then the Spirit works again—so
that you are merciful, just as your heavenly Father has been merciful to you;
so that you lay aside all grudges, all notions of revenge, all hatred, all
ill-speaking; so that you live not to gratify your lusts and desires, but to walk in the Spirit with the saints
toward the kingdom which is your ultimate goal. Toward this end, may the Lord
continue His mercy to us, within us, and among us. In the name of the
Father and of the Son (+) and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The peace of God which
passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus always.
Amen.
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