It has not left me. I hear it in the short lapses in thought while at work, mind temporarily blank, the cursor on my computer screen blinking impatiently at the end of an unfinished sentence. I hear it then, but only a fleeting whisper of it. ‘Mercy’ The slippery five letters that have clung to my spirit of late, breaking loose from a distant part of my subconscious to settle in the foremost part of my conscious, nagging for attention. Mercy, It has this unassuming air about it, does it not?. But it’s not quite about the word, in fact it has nothing to do with it, it’s more about why it came in search of me in particular. It arrived about 2 short weeks ago, at a young Christian retreat at Snake Island, Lagos, Nigeria. It was the 2nd day of the retreat, when it finally cornered me seated in the 2nd row. It drove straight towards me, leaping out from the words of the scripture the young Preacher was reading in James 3:17
“The wisdom that comes from Heaven is ….. full of mercy”. my subconscious at once stirred in place to defend against the sound of it, closing its heavy doors to the unwelcome guest trying to force entry. “…full of..mercy” Full of? Was it not too lofty an ideal? to overflow with something as bitter, ego-bruising and pain-inflicting as Mercy?
Mercy: withholding due punishment.
When I feel hurt, all I can get my mind to think about is how to even the scores. To find relief in seeing my offender equally hurt or more, and preferably more. When I am judged without first being understood, when a co-worker rudely demands the work I owe him before it is due, when I am barked at instead of spoken to, when my messages are intentionally ignored, when the overworked bus driver rains down curses on me for asking a simple ‘How do I get to…?”
A torrent of angry rage will well up deep in my chest, cresting higher and higher, sometimes staining my eyes with hurt tears. My quick tongue, my able yet rash defender will demand permission to strike back. My mind, conditioned from 5 years of all-out warfare with the Devil, floods with the usual reminders of God’s Mercy to prideful, lustful, faithless, greedy and immoral me, and the angry waves will briefly subside, but only too soon build up again, taunting me with the fleeting pleasure of sweet revenge. Finally, when I am spent from several repeats of the endless cycle, I am left with this crushing guilt, and an overwhelming sense of failure. That I have failed to transform as He commanded that I do. Shouldn’t I as recipient of His great, great mercy, be the most generous of it? but yet I heave and puff just trying to tame the beast in me that always wants its pound of flesh.
Why O my soul, do you crave justice more than mercy?