Mercy Me!
1 Peter 2:10
"Once you were no people but now you are God's people; once you
had not received mercy but now you have received mercy.
Many people have the notion that mercy means pretending a nasty sin was "nothing". In a quirky way, this is what keeps
some of us from accepting forgiveness from God. "How can I ever be forgiven after what I did?" weask. "It wouldn't be
right for me to come slinking back to God now, after the despicable thing I did. I deserve to be punished." And in imposing
that judgment on ourselves, we can become vastly more merciless toourselves than any god out of Greek mythology ever
was. We can shut ourselves up in dungeons of self-hatred darker and colder than any ever built of stone. But the reality is
that mercy is not for those who "didnothing" but for those of us (all of us!?) who have really and truly sinned. God desires
with all his heart to love you and forgive us, not because he doesn't know how nasty we've been and how ashamed we are of
it, but becausehe knows this perfectly well and loves us still. So let us receive the mercy he gives in abundance today. We
won't be cheating God of anything. In fact, we'll be doing the right thing and opening the way to restoring and healing what
was damaged by our sin.