God's Mercy

So if you haven't been coming to Timberview over the past few months, shame on you (just kidding), we have been studying the Beattitudes. The funny thing to me is whoever came up with the name for this amazing set of guidelines to live by. Of all the things to call them, they came up with the most simple, yet completely encompassing description. Be these attitudes. I think Christ would like that. A non-imposing explanation for such an Earth shaking set of clues on how we should live, just like Jesus.

Anyway, we studied Matthew 5:7 which says, "God blesses those who are merciful, for they will be shown mercy". And the immediate question comes to my mind, does everybody deserve mercy? What about those people who committ such horrid crimes that our only human reaction is anger and contempt for them. When we want to run out and start judging and sentencing them to death, would God want us to show them mercy? Does God expect us to just excuse them for what they have done to us or to others we may or may not know? Of all of the Beattitudes, this is by far the most confusing for me. At what point does our ability to not show mercy to certain individuals become satsifactory to God? I know that we are ultimately not the final judge for those poor, misguided individuals, but we are only human right?

Well, I was reading Romans 9 today and as God always does, he answered my question a little. Romans 9:14-16 which says, "Are we saying then that God was unfair? Of course not! For God said to Moses, 'I will show mercy to anyone I choose, and I will show compassion to anyone I choose.' So it is God who decides to show mercy. We can neither choose it nor work for it." So, we obvisouly can't show the same level of mercy to those who would receive it, but God tells us that it isn't possible to control the amount of mercy we show others or even the amount of mercy we receive from Him. I think he already gave us a ton of mercy when he died for our sins.

It also goes on to say in Romans 9:18, "So you see, God chooses to show mercy to some, and he chooses to harden the hearts of others so they refuse to listen." So, again, how do we place ourselves in the path of God's mercy? It says in Romans as well that those who trust in Him, not follow his law, will be called Children of God. So just simply following God's laws does not make Him happy, we need to trust in him fully. Just when I think I have answered my original question about God's mercy and how we show mercy to others, I just open a whole other volume of questions yet to be answered. You know the best part though, I have an entire life to build up all of the questions I want to ask him when I get to Heaven someday. Thank God truly that we have hope and he shows us mercy for the things we do though. What would we do without Him?