Am I Able to See, Feel and Do?

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.Matthew 5:7

In the true stories section of the Readers Digest, this story was mentioned a few years ago. A man and his wife were travelling on the Interstate Highway in Florida when their car broke down. The next exit was 40 miles away, and there had been a rash of highway robberies, so no one was stopping to help them. They actually counted 100 cars that drove past, until they finally stopped counting. At last a man stopped to help. This man who could barely speak English, helped them our, took no money for it when they offered and then he drove away. The wife turned to her husband and said, "How do you pay somebody back for that?" After thinking for a while, the husband said, "We can't, but what we can do is pass along what he did for us."

The religion that Jesus faced in His day was shallow and superficial. It was more ritualistic on the outside than being inside. Jesus confronts this external, self-righteous leaders and people and tells them that what really matters is what is on the inside. The poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, the merciful and so on. All of these are internal qualities.

The first four beatitude that we dealt with were all inner principles, an inner attitude. What we see of ourselves before God. This beatitude which is the fifth in the series while being an inner attitude also begins to reach out and touch others. When there is poverty of spirit and you realize that you are nothing but a beggar, you become willing to give and you'll be merciful.

As with each of the previous beatitudes that we dealt with, we need to define what is this quality of "mercy" that God wants to build into our lives really is. We may have some preconceived ideas about what it means, but what does the Bible actually tell us? I believe that a scriptural definition of mercy is best described in the parable of the Good Samaritan. It is when you "see someone's need, feel compassion for them, and then do something to meet that need."

In the parable, the Good Samaritan saw how the man was beaten and half dead, felt compassion and bandaged his wounds and poured oil and wine and he did something so that the man's needs are met. Jesus then at the end of the parable asks the young man who is the neighbour to the man in need and the young man replies, "the one who showed mercy toward him."

A genuine Christian should be ready to show mercy to others because they know that God has had mercy on them. That's the point of Jesus' parable of the unforgiving debtor in Matthew 18:21-35.

In fact the story that I began with is a good analogy to understand what Christ did and what is needed to be done now by us. When the wife turned to her husband and said, "How do you pay somebody back for that?" Husband replied, "We can't; but what we can do us pass along what he did for us."

Dear friends, God saw us helpless in our sin and He did what no one else would do or could do and sent Jesus to die on the cross to pay for our sins and save us. And what cane we possibly do to pay Him back? Nothing! We could never pay Him back for one drop of the blood of Jesus that saved us! But what we can do, and what we will do, if we are really grateful, is to pass along to others the same kind of mercy that God first gave us.

This Lenten Season may we be able to see the needs around us with a compassionate heart and actually do something for the need.
May the Lord help us to have this mercy in action. God Bless you.