Be Merciful

AMAZING GRACE --Sung by Susan Boyle

As your Father in heaven requires, be merciful as your Father is merciful, patient and slow to anger. For those who feel wronged in various ways, it's easier said than done. To reach the place of 'no regrets' one must also 'get there from here.' For many the getting has never been more difficult.

It's a radical idea that we might extend mercy to those who have wronged us, indiscriminately insulted, injured, humiliated or harmed us; those who have lied for their own personal gain, misled, omitted important information to disadvantage another; who have simply looked the other way, complicit with events.

Blessed are you declares the Christ in the Beatitudes, those who suffer in all manner, the poor, the sick, the lame, the beggar, the widow, lack of spirit; the would be disciple is warned, exhorted to take up their own responsibilities; do not think that your self-centeredness or complacency will not be noticed.

Those who aspire to be disciples must not presume the blessings of the Lord; they must take up the Way, be an active agent of Divine justice and creators in this world; do to others as you would want done to you.

Yet when our instinct to preserve ourself is greater than any other thing, all these ideas are mere niceties. Revenge, leveling, evening up the score is more likely our primary thought. How true!
Yet the Christ with full awareness of these natural desires issues his challenge: be merciful--with divine assistance there may be the boost to this end. Divine intervention has the power of the Spirit to heal, to restore, to make new again our self and others.

If only to pick them up, kiss them, set them back down again and be on your way, because mercy is central, the cornerstone to all spiritual virtues.

Seek both justice and mercy: "for where there is hope, there is faith; where there is faith, there is love, and where there is love, God is.