| | "Peace on earth, and mercy mild,..."
What exactly should be mild about God's mercy? It needs to be severe; radical even. God's mercy needs to take broken people bent on destroying themselves, and change them by love into daughters and sons, bent on building each other up for God's glory. God's mercy is not mild, or even close to it. It looks mild sometimes, when we rest in the arms of our Father, but it is in fact rushing like a mighty river to quench our burning sin, to drown it in love so strong that it would kill us to save us. That love does kill us, in fact. And it raises us, too to a new and better life, so much fuller that we see our old life as death by comparison. Those arms we rest in are strong enough to destroy us at a touch, but they don't. They re-make us instead.
God's mercy came to us as a child about two thousand years ago now, but it has stayed with us as a man, turning over the tables of our broken lives in the temples of our hearts โ temples that we profane by harlotry with other gods. God's mercy will rip a man to pieces to put him back together again the right way. It is not mild. God's mercy is scary, invasive, not "safe". Christ did not come only to hold little children and make them safe from the devil โ he came to destroy the devil and all his works. He did not come just to protect the good, but to put an end to evil forever. He did this by dying. Is that mild? And He ask us โ He demands us, if we are Christians, to die as well. Is that what we call mild mercy?
I think it should be more like
"Hark! the Herald angels sing,
'Glory to the newborn King!'
Peace on earth and mercy mighty,
God and sinners reconciled." (etc.)
Mighty mercy. I need it. And it is here. Thank God.
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| | Posted 12/23/2006 6:48 PM - 41 Views - 12 eProps - 7 comments
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. I don't know, I've lost that desire and need to do it this year so I never write on my own but I read others and try to keep up with people. And yes, textmessaging has been delightful 