Meditating Mercy

Some thoughts upon reading Madeline L'Engle's book, A Live Coal in the Sea:

“But all the wickedness in the world which man may do or think is no more to the mercy of God than a live coal dropped in the sea.” William Langland (167)

When I first read that quote I squirmed. For, it seems like the atrocities of Hitler and those who persecute Christians can’t be so quickly quenched by God’s mercy. Maybe my hesitancy came because too often I think mercy equals permissiveness. As L’Engle says, “Mercy and permissiveness are not the same thing.”

“Mercy. It didn’t mean that everything was okay, could or should be condoned. But we can’t move out of ourselves and our own self-justifications until we look in the mirror and know, yes, I, too, could have done this. Or worse.” (170)

“Papa had lived a long, full life, and he had come to terms with more than most people can begin to imagine. He was able to be merciful to himself, and to teach us to be merciful, too. He believed that God’s redeeming love can come into the most terrible things, and while I do not have the kind of radiant faith that Papa had, I believed him.”(285)

Because of my atrocious sins Christ died on the cross. How can I say it must take more mercy to forgive another person (i.e. Hitler) than it takes to forgive me? Lord, have mercy on me! The song “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy” speaks profoundly to this: “But we make his love to narrow by false limits of our own.”

Fanny Crosby says it well: “Could we with ink the ocean fill and were the skies with parchment made, were every stalk on earth a quill and every man a scribe by trade, to write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry, nor could the scroll contain the whole though stretched from sky to sky.” I believe this to be true!