Have mercy........

I remember as a child a rather savage game called "mercy, mercy" - the idea was to inflict pain on your opponent - usually by bending their arms back - until they cried "mercy, mercy" - it seems an odd sort of game now, looking back but I know that children still play the same game - testing themselves and their resolve against each other.

The words of the blind beggar are well known - Jesus, Son of God, have mercy upon me. In them both the person of Jesus and human relationship to the Godhead are stated. Jesus is the Son of God and any act of God in seeking out and restoring the individual or humanity itself is an act of mercy. The resolve of the man to plead for, or is it even demand, mercy is quite astounding in the face of opposition which would have seen him as less than human in many ways due to his lack of vision.

He calls for a mercy of restoration to fullness of life. Faith, calls us to this demand, not only for ourselves but for others. Today in the Episcopal calendar we celebrate two twentieth century men who showed this mercy and demand for full life. Maximillian Kolbe, a priest who eventually died at the hand of the Nazis and Jonathan Daniels, a civil rights activist, killed when he stepped in front of a young girl who was under attack.

I wonder how often these two men recalled the words of the blind beggar - it seems that the closer we get to Jesus the more we realize just how reliant we are on Him and not ourselves. So even as we show mercy we rely on it - even as we seek to restore the world, we must stand open, imploring God to restore us to fullness of life. Asking for mercy is not a last ditch effort of the desperate soul, it is a part of every day life.