How does one receive and extend mercy?
Mercy must be received before it can be extended. You and I stand in need of mercy. We have this great need to be forgiven and come into relationship with the God who loves us and created us for intimate relationship with Him. When we believe in Jesus Christ and receive Him as our Lord and Savior, then we receive divine mercy and pardon. We are born again, and heaven will be our forever home. Praise God for salvation!
After we receive initial mercy and grace, we live a new life where we can be conduits of His love to others. Jesus calls us to be a merciful people. We demonstrate that we have received divine mercy when we extend mercy to our fellow man. Mother Teresa was a wonderful example of a merciful soul. Years ago in Calcutta, India, she picked up an ailing man, placed him in a wheelbarrow, and rolled him to a hospital, where he was rejected. However, she would not leave until he was admitted, so they eventually took him in.
I read that on the edges of garbage dumps in Mexico City, millions of Mexicans make their home. A group built a home for the dying and a medical clinic. In Cairo, Egypt, at the City of the Dead, I read about some amazing acts of mercy (Eileen and Kathleen Egan,
Blessed Are You: Mother Teresa and the Beatitudes, p. 92-97). This City of the Dead in Cairo was fascinating to me, so I began to read more about it and discovered that it is a four mile-long north-south corridor of tombs and mausoleums. It is home to five million Egyptians who are displaced and have fallen on hard times economically. After the 1992 earthquake, many families fled there to live in their family's tombs. It is against the law to live there, but the government tolerates the people. Roaches and rats abound, and the smell is awful, as they live among the dead bones. Also nearby is the city dump for Cairo's refuse. Death, stench, and garbage; not a place you would think about going and extending mercy. But even amid such stench and deplorable conditions, I read of a group on a mission of mercy who went to the City of the Dead and there built a dispensary and welfare center at the corner of the dumping-ground. The Missionaries of Charity are a ray of light in a dark place, showing the love of Jesus. (
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There is one way to receive God's mercy, and that is through the merits and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, but there are multiple ways to extend mercy to those with whom you come into contact. You can extend a helping hand; you can give small tokens of kindness, like a smile; you can give a random act of kindness to some unsuspecting soul; you can cook someone a meal, visit them in the hospital, or forgive them when they do you wrong; you can sell your possessions and do without something you like so another can have something they need.
If you know God and mercy does not flow from you to others, what is blocking the sweet flow of mercy from God's heart to hurting humanity all around you? Where are you hung up? Is it unresolved sin, in particular the sin of unforgiveness? One pastor put it this way: "If I know that I am a debtor to mercy alone, if I know I am a Christian solely because of that free grace of God, there should be no pride left in me, there should be nothing vindictive, there should be no insisting upon my rights." (Lloyd-Jones,
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, p. 88)
Will you receive God's mercy for you today and then extend that mercy to those with whom you come in contact?
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