Mercy, Mercy, Mercy

This week, there has been a significant amount of heartbreak in the larger circle of people where I live. I can't go into details without breaking confidentiality, but some of the heartbreak requires me to be a little bit 'harder-edged' than I am by nature. I watch people I care about fall apart, or lose what they had, or hurt someone, and my own heart yearns for things to be made right. "Fix it, God!" I want to yell. Isn't it justice I yearn for?

Maybe. In dealing with the difficulties, I discovered something hard to swallow. When I am trying hardest to be merciful, sometimes it is experienced as unfair or mean. I offer kindness, and it is received as judgment. I try to help, and it is interpreted in the most negative way. If a wrong throws the scales of justice off balance, then justice is to set them right. But sometimes mercy accomplishes the same balance, the same renewal and restoration.

What if justice and mercy are really the same thing experienced from two different points-of-view? The gavel bangs down and passes sentence on a criminal, and his life is shattered. Maybe it's a mercy to the people who might have been his victims. Perhaps it's even a mercy that he is not free to continue the life he was leading. When someone decides to bear with me instead of holding every mistake against me, that's certainly mercy. But isn't it justice too? If I show mercy, I'm still acknowledging a wrong, trying to re-set the balance that was lost when the wrong was done.

Sometimes when God seems harshest, or hardest-of-hearing - is that mercy but I just can't see it? Is he always offering mercy, even when the judgment seems unfair to me? Like my friend, who receives a merciful offer of healing thinks she is being judged, do I interpret what God sends as harsh judgment, when he is really trying to make me whole?

I do wonder. I believe the world would be better off with more mercy. If the cruel would show more mercy, justice would be done. If the unkind would show more mercy, their victims would be set free. If the perfectionists would show more mercy, they would find their own lives closer to perfection. Balance is restored in either case, isn't it?

I want to think about this some more. In the meantime, I want to be known as merciful, long to live out Micah 6:8. Something to work on, pray for.