Tag: Mercy

Enough Snowflakes Make a Blizzard

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If being compassionate and having empathy makes me a snowflake, then I’d like to be a blizzard. If there’s enough of us, we might get something done.

If I hear a person say “Transgender people are perverted and transgender identities are one of the most destructive social contagions in human history,” then I’m done listening. If I hear a person use the Old Testament (Leviticus – where we all would get stoned to death for one reason or another) to defend any and all anti-LGBTQ talk, then I’m done listening. If I hear a person say “black people don’t have the brain capacity to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go take a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously,” then I’m done listening. If I watch an intelligent, educated, trained public speaker ask for anyone in disagreement to come speak, yet not let that person fully iterate their thought/argument/thesis, then I’m done listening.

It doesn’t matter how much love you speak if you include phobic comments like the few I’ve included; it’s disqualifying.

In my opinion, you can’t use the judgment of the Old Testament to enforce the love of the New Testament. I choose the grace of the New Testament to showcase the love of the New Testament. Judgment I leave to someone else. (not you). (not you, either).

To broaden the lens which I’m asking you to use, step back to include ALL the other religions…. because there are hundreds. I note, for the record, that the one that is pushing the cruel words and judgments seems to originate here in the USA where the constitution made clear that we could choose our own.

My vote is that we all stop using violence to try and win arguments. My secondary vote is that we stop using cruel language to diminish our opponents.

If you’re so full of love, then how about taking a break from judgment and exploring what grace feels like in your heart, in your actions, in your life – to ‘the least of these’?

Drink The Rain and Thank The Clouds?

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Water Deep recorded a song, “I Will Not Forget You”.  It starts out with “Many men will drink the rain and turn to face the clouds; many men will hear you speak, but they will never turn around.”

How sad the truth.  How accurate the phrase.

What can we do to help our friends realize that it is God’s voice that caused them to turn around?  Even though God formed the earth to make rain and weather (which makes doubters use science as an explanation), His mercy still falls like a drink of water to a parched throat. 

On a summer’s day, after the sun, wind, and dust of the Great Plains, my throat craves!  I lust after a huge glass of dark, freshly brewed iced tea.  I want to drink it until my front teeth ache, my stomach pooches, and there is still another gut-busting draught left in the glass.

THAT is where God wants me.  Thank God for – not the tea, it’s just the metaphor – the satisfaction to my itch, my unrest, YOUR sense of dissatisaction, unease, that “what am I doing with my life?” feeling.

God sends the rain on the just and the unjust; true.  The difference is this:  His faithful send prayers of thanks to him for mercy.  The unjust merely look for a way to gain from God’s blessing.

What We Hide Under

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Sometimes people are desperate. 

They may be hanging on to something, or trying to hang on to something, or upset, or angry, or in despair.  If this person is private, or not able to communicate this desperation, then we don’t get what is happening with them.  All we notice is that our ‘subject’ is off in some way. 

This is the point where we need to have even more compassion and grace than ever.  You, as the friend or observer, MUST notice the difference in their general attitude, demeanor, “way”.  If you miss it, you will just think your friend or family member is being… well, pick one:  awful, a jerk, insipid, traitorous, faithless, back-stabbing, hurtful.  We usually find out later what is really wrong with our person.

Please don’t underestimate what your little push of grace back at them will do for them.  Sometimes only a little nudge will push them back on course, and sometimes only a small bump pushes the comet out of harm’s way.  After all, you can only do your part; love, cherish, save.

Los Misericordiosos

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Yeah, it’s Spanish.  It means a combination of compassionate, merciful, charitable, grace-ful (as in full of grace), humane, even pious.  But all those words in English don’t reach me.  All of those words, to me, have other stuff associated with them.  Like Compassion International, charitable giving as a tax deduction, graceful swans or ballet dancers or “Days of Grace”, by Arthur Ashe.  Whatever king’s nickname was The Merciful, as in Ashot III the Merciful, King of Armenia.  The Humane Society.  Pious as in “holier than thou”.

The deal with hearing God in a foreign language is that all our cultural baggage is swept away, flicked off, denuded.  Music counts as a foreign language, by the way.  God, maybe the Holy Spirit, reaches us in a cleaner way because we are not distracted.  We use a different part of our brains to process foreign languages and music, so we have a chance to be affected.  It is too easy to stay insulated when we are totally in our comfort zone.  We’ve got to look PAST ourselves, SEE the miserable, and FIND A WAY to comfort them.

The Latin roots of misericordia are this:  miseri-wretched and cordia – heart.  I see that as literally having one heart with the wretched of this world.  To FEEL what THEY feel, and to suffer like they suffer.  Misericordia is to compassion/mercy as misericordioso is to compassionate/merciful. 

It means not walking by the kid getting made fun of.  It means defending a friend’s reputation when you hear someone bagging on them.  It means being NICE to that irritating kid (friend or not) who keeps bugging you about, well, anything.  It means patience when you really just want to scream. 

Treating your brother or sister as a special person, not an annoying pest.

Jesus begs us to be los Misericordiosos.