Have Mercy on Me

Stare back into history. Even despite the mist and fog, does it not bear plain witness to the human condition according to the Scriptures?

In every time and place, every story and season—in fact, inside us all—one will always find men and women who think themselves right and wise. Proverbs says, “There is more hope for a fool than them.”

Of course, humans retain fragments of goodness and wisdom by reason of being endowed with them by their Creator. Yet even if we claim that these fragments are somehow ours—not gifts—are they not still only fragments, insufficient to accomplish the purpose for which they exist?

What we need is an antidote to this powerful disease of believing that we are right and wise.

Let the self-abasing words of David and Job be our medicine: “Who can discern his errors? Cleanse me from my hidden faults.” “Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”

The one who knows that they know nothing knows something, but the one who cries out daily, “Have mercy on me, a sinner,” knows a thousand times more.

The beautiful secret is that God’s mercy has been building up against the walls of our lives and hearts and minds, applying loving pressure and waiting—rooting—to burst through at the slightest motion of genuine penitence.

Inside God’s stern command to repent is not hardness or hatred; it is His desire to embrace.