Deserve: Matthew 5:7

Mercy - not getting what you deserve. What a liberating thought. It truly is amazing, unless you haven't considered what you deserve. It truly is humbling, unless you haven't surveyed your crime. Consider the ability to breathe, or the ability to feel the pulse of life beneath your wrist. When each and every one of us should receive torture for eternity. But God.... who is just slammed the gavel and said guilty, punishable by death. Though His justice would be carried out on His Son. His hand was stayed by His indescribable grace and we..... well we received mercy.

This is a great reality for those who are citizens of this Kingdom. The only problem is we're expected to respond in the same way. Yes, we are recipients, but we are also called to be distributors of mercy. Sure this is liberating, but the freedom we have been given we seem to get stingy with it. This is a tough one if you look through the lenses of the world that have mirrors on the inside of them. If you look through the lenses of the cross you begin to realize everybody deserves mercy from you.

Consider that the blessed person has already received mercy if they are:

• poor in spirit - realizing their debt to God is insurmountable unless He picks up the tab.
• mourning over the price that was paid for their freedom.
• meek enough to realize that the right to be a citizen was out of their hands.
• hungry and thirsting for the righteousness that they could not obtain on their own.

So for us to be merciful, we must realize that sometimes we have to absorb the debt, pray for those who hurt us, go the extra mile, give them the coat off of our back, and realize we are doing what we saw our Father do....through Christ.