Today, we live in a world of our own making. While man remains the sole proprietor and determiner of his identity, while he unties God’s claim upon him by his own choosing, until he reclaims God as essential to life and freedom, then mercy, God’s transcendent love, evades him. If fear is gone, the mere expression and feeling of it, how shall God’s bond of love come closer?
No mere or immodest expression describes the way by which God brings man to Him. What begins without knowing, binds him to fear however feeble the feeling of it, ascends him to this closer bond of love. This is not the only way of God, no, not even the means by which He creates within, but the only true response man can give Him when at first grace appears.
Greater fear does not exist than the precipice of eternity, not eternity of itself, but how and where we shall spend it, the realization each person gave truth either a passing glance or a life devoted to God. What, then, of life, of personhood? Where are we when we no longer fear God, when we are no longer defined as His created, undefined by Him? How shall man know mercy if he does not know God?
“Is this not the fast I have chosen: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke?” (Isaiah 58: 6, NKJV).
There is but ignorance, by human logic and reasoning, stunting our Christian growth. Desensitized by intellect and culture, our sin, our problem, is we think we know. We do not. But the road between, our descent from pride and ascent into humility, varied by means, is marked by God’s abiding mercy, His preparing us for revelation. No modest coincidence exists then when we discover mercy, the heart of righteousness, is what God intends His children to attain and give.
The fruit of grace wills one to obedience. Herein, good Christians must will themselves, not simply to be better people, but to allow God to will one’s heart. With this, I struggle daily. Living in an untethered age, I find it hard to be merciful. Shouldn’t my unencumbered neighbor know better? Should not I?
If I fail to loose the bonds of wickedness, to show mercy in the face of lies and half-truths, how shall the untethered soul reclaim his identity in God?
“If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, if you extend your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light shall dawn in the darkness, and your darkness shall be as the noonday.” (Isaiah 58: 9,10, NKJV).
This present age needs light, needs every Christian to show mercy to the untethered soul, to lead him to find personhood in God and reach the precipice and know of where his eternity shall be spent.
For nothing changes truth, not life, not death, not even man’s unbelief.