April 18 -Great are God’s Mercies
Psalm 111:4 says, “He is full of compassion.” It is sometimes hard to perceive mercy because we live in a cruel world where nothing seems fair. But the truth is God is Love and God is mercy. He is full of compassion.
The meaning of mercy is compassion or forgiveness shown towards someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm. This means if someone is mean to me and if one day, I have the power to punish them and throw them in jail, but instead, I decided to forgive them, I am showing them mercy.
This is the nature of God, He does not give us what we deserve, we may deserve punishment, but instead, He holds it back from us, and loves us.
The Bible says the rain falls on the unjust and the just: …that ye may be the children of your Father who is in Heaven. For He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust….”
On the scales of punishment, many times it seems the wicked get away, but perhaps God is giving them time to change and also pouring out mercy, which they never deserved. He knows the future so He keeps extending mercy, but we keep wondering why the wicked are not punished. There is always a higher reason for everything.
All in all, the greatest thing is the blessing of mercy poured on us morning by morning, bathed in His love and mercy. This gives us the strength to get up and do things, to work, to breathe and to live. His mercy helps us to renew our lives and all that we do.
Some Mercy Quotes:
I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
If the end of one mercy were not the beginning of another, we were undone.
PHILIP HENRY
Mercy and forgiveness must be free and unmerited to the wrongdoer. If the wrongdoer has to do something to merit it, then it isn’t mercy.
TIMOTHY KELLER
If a person is convicted of a crime, there’s a slight chance he will face a kind of judge who will show him a little mercy. Maybe reduce his sentence by a few years. That’s not a lot of mercy. It’s a little mercy, and the truth is, when it comes to humans, mercy is hard to come by. Not so with God. His mercy is like a huge bucket of water filled to the rim so that if you bumped into it, it would spill all over you. His mercy is so great that He doesn’t just forgive us when we fail, but He erases any record of our failure. He doesn’t just reduce our sentence–eternal punishment–He eliminates it and sets us free.
CRAIG GROESCHEL
It is mercy, not justice or courage or even heroism, that alone can defeat evil.
PETER KREEFT
Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Mercy is stronger than your sword.
P. C. CAST
We may imitate the Deity in all His attributes, but mercy is the only one in which we can pretend to equal Him. We cannot, indeed, give like God, but we may forgive like Him.
LAURENCE STERNE
Rita F. Kurian
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