The Merciful

Today’s verse celebrates us extending God’s love to others!

I don’t know about you, but judgement comes easy for me. Like I said in yesterday’s post, I care greatly about right and wrong. I don’t know why, but it’s how God has wired me. So, when it comes to showing mercy to people and choosing to extend grace, I have to always be actively thinking about it and choosing to extend it towards others. Today’s verse reminds me of another verse in 1 John 4:18-20 which says, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he (God) first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.”

Imagine if others always felt free to mess up and sin around us because they knew they would be forgiven and have mercy extended to them? What if we extended mercy to others the way God has extended mercy to us? That when we too messed up and sinned against the Creator of the world, He too did not give up on us, but decided to pursue a relationship with us anyway? I think that would be radical of us as Christians. I think it would be showing the world that we are being sanctified by the Holy Spirit and God is making us into the Royal Priesthood we are supposed to be (1 Peter 2:9-10).

Alyssa Rasor