Do you ever find yourself getting frustrated about your lot in life and saying, “Hey – I deserve better than this! Just once I’d like to get what I deserve in life!”
Not me. Not anymore. I don’t want what I deserve. I want grace and mercy. Grace says, “You don’t deserve all the blessings in your life, but I’m going to give them to you anyway.” Mercy says, “You deserve punishment and wrath, but I’m going to give you forgiveness, love and abundant life.”
So I say, “Bring on the grace and mercy!”
The other day, I was thinking about a big slice of mercy I received last year. Just three weeks after buying a brand new car, I had an unfortunate encounter with the back end of another car at the post office. The other driver and I were both pulling out of parking spaces and sadly ended up on the same piece of pavement at precisely the same time. It wasn’t pretty.
Being well trained not to “be a bother,” I agreed that we didn’t need to call a policeman to the scene of our mishap. We simply traded insurance info and went on our respective ways. Weeks of hassles and phone calls followed and I was not optimistic that the situation could be resolved without a significant outlay of cash on my part. I relived the fender-bender over and over in my brain, wishing that I’d hit a few more red lights on my way to the post office, or that the line there had been a little slower – anything so that I wouldn’t have been pulling out of my parking spot exactly when I did.
When the whole accident mess was resolved, something truly amazing happened – I didn’t owe anybody any money. To this day, I’m not sure what happened, but when you get a statement that says you don’t owe any money, you don’t ask why. You just appreciate. And I did. Boy howdy, I did. I just thanked my insurance agent and God for delivering me out of a mess I had gotten myself into.
Can you relate? Have you ever been spared consequences you deserved? Often, we do reap what we sow, but every once in awhile, we don’t. I spell that M-E-R-C-Y, and it’s one of God’s specialties.
There’s a wonderful example of God’s mercy in the book of Joshua. The Israelites were moving into their Promised Land and God told them not to make any peace treaties with the folks who lived there. But a sneaky group of Gibeonites tricked the children of Israel into signing a treaty with them.
A short time later, those rascally Gibeonites were attacked and they called upon their “covenant partners,” the Israelites, to come to their rescue. Don’t you know that ticked off the Israelites? They realized they had been tricked into this covenant, but they knew they were bound by it. And the Israelites weren’t exactly innocent in the matter – the Bible says they erred greatly when they signed the treaty without “inquiring of the Lord.”
So the Israelites had to help defend the Gibeonites. In fact, they had to march all night and then fight a tough battle that raged throughout the next day. Joshua and the Israelites needed some extra daylight to finish off their enemies, so God came through with Grade A miracle – he made the sun stand still for awhile – long enough to give the Israelite army the victory.
That was mercy. The Israelites had gotten themselves into a jam by their own arrogance and impetuousness – not consulting the Lord before they made a treaty with the Gibeonites. But God didn’t lean down from heaven and shout, “You got yourself into this, now you get yourselves out!” No, He had compassion on His children when they cried out to Him in humility and desperation.
And sometimes, He’ll still do that today. If you’ve blown it, humble yourself and cry out to Him. He can make the sun stand still if that’s what is needed. He can even work in and through insurance companies to deliver His mercy to us. He sees; He knows; and He always acts for our good and His glory.
Psalm 28:6 — “Praise be to the LORD, for he has heard my cry for mercy.”