Mercy

“Mercy!” So many ways have I heard that word used.  I recall movies of the Emperors either raising their thumb or to the contrary at the screams of the innocents or the defeated who begged for mercy.  I have heard my mother many times exhale, “Mercy” or “My mercy” or “Lord have mercy.”  There is a Christian band called Mercy Me.  Do we give it much thought?

I think when we say a phrase like the aforementioned, we are gasping at something grand, awesome, or shocking.  I wonder if attached to the emotion exclaimed in “Oh my mercy” or “Goodness Mercy!” may also be a plea of desperation.  Have you ever said, “Mercy sakes”? 

Consider the wonder of God’s mercy and grace in our salvation.  This mercy of God that by His grace He saves us is a wonder isn’t it?  How undeserving we are that He would give us the thumbs up—extending mercy.  Out of God’s great love for us, He moves His will to favor us by sheer grace—a determination of His will.  I loved what Lacy Sturm said last week. It was something like this.  “Oh Mercy! God is holy.  And I am so not that. He would have every right to push me away.  In fact that would have been just…but He didn’t.”  That small word makes a lot of difference in our eternity doesn’t it?  “But God…”

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, ⁵ even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), ⁶ and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” Ephesians 2:4-6.