Reluctance & Mercy

Day 6: Mercy

"The Lord is good to everyone.
    He showers compassion on all his creation."

OK...I'm a word geek...I love definitions. When I looked up Mercy, most of the definitions used compassion to describe mercy...and that's great. But then I read this:

"the discretionary power of a judge to pardon someone or to mitigate punishment"

That tells me mercy is undeserved. God grants us undeserved mercy...and I'm glad He's better at handing it out than I am.

Last night at church, I had the opportunity to be merciful to a child who has refused to come inside to practice for our Christmas program, but now that we are onstage, he wants to participate. He has trouble controlling himself, so will need an adult to accompany him on stage.

I was down with that idea at the beginning of rehearsals...a month ago...but now, selfishly, I want things to go well...and I don't necessarily want to deal with the unexpected.

Reluctantly I said OK.

And things didn't go as bad as I thought they would...not NEARLY as bad.

Thankfully God isn't reluctant to use mercy over His undeserving creation.

May I learn to act in the same way.

* Tomorrow's promise: Hears Prayers - Jeremiah 33:3
* The inspiration behind this series comes from a list of 25 promises of God from a blog post over at Our Out-of-Sync-Life