Good morning…
“Darkness – with its numbness, loneliness, and shame – very often accompanies a deep spiritual journey and can be the means to the knowledge of both God and self,” says ninety-four-year-old Betty Skinner. “The freedom to love and be loved is often discovered in the darkness, so it is important to befriend it.”
Betty continues: “If we look upon this painful season not as the hand of an enemy trying to crush us, but endeavor to see it as the hand of a loving God who is closer than our breath, leading us down to the ground of our being, our fearsome journey will finally open to a great, wide plateau of love – a safe place – that abiding place with God.”
Betty concludes: “To resist, ignore, or reject the hand of such a friendship is to be deaf to the Voice of God calling us home, the Voice of the Beloved who creates us in love and longs to re-create us in mercy” (The Hidden Life Awakened, 74).
My curious heart responds, “What does it mean for You to re-create us in mercy, LORD?”
I google the definition of mercy and learn its many facets.
- Compassion shown toward an offender, an enemy, or a person in one’s power.
- The discretionary power of a judge to pardon someone.
- An undeserved act of kindness, compassion, or favor.
- Something that gives evidence of divine blessing.
God creates us in love and longs to re-create us in mercy. It is easy to love when the conditions are right. Mercy takes center stage when conditions are very wrong, when life is unfair, when pain spreads like a pandemic. In deep darkness, only God can re-create us in mercy. In grace and generosity. In leniency and life-giving peace. In forgiveness and forbearance. In tolerance and tenderness. In relief and regeneration. Love is easy in the light. Mercy is mustered with God in the dark.
Day and night, will we finally open ourselves to that great, wide plateau of love mixed with mercy – a safe place – that abiding place with God?
No one has seen God at any time. But if we love one another [with unselfish concern], God abides in us, and His love [the love that is His essence abides in us and] is completed and perfected in us (1 John 4:12, AMP).
…Sue…
