“Blessed are the merciful, they shall obtain mercy”
In my poem ‘Mercy’ I wrote:
How can we who by mercy breathe,
Who depend on Him for every need,
Refuse to pardon our fellow men,
Whose faults are trite in comparison?
The human heart, once fresh and verdant in its eden days,
Is now so often, through the moral-warming of our pride,
An arid land, despoiled of growth and vigour, sin-smogged,
And in dire need of Love’s oasis to revive what’s died.
The human condition may seem fair enough, but for life,
The true life, in its entirety – eternity,
We depend utterly on our loving Father to drench us,
With mercy’s wash, or we’re lost in our own stale misery.
To be merciful is merely to be what we should be.
As the plant stalk shoots toward the light, and animals
Hunt for food, so too, our divine blueprint held within,
And to be inspected within, shows what mercy signals.
To withhold mercy is therefore to stab our own soul;
To pull away the only foundation on which we stand.
The man who refuses to forgive, even for great hurts,
Or what he perceives as great hurts, is self-damned.
To show mercy is, ultimately, to be wise:
To opt in with the winning team, the only team,
Because, as Jesus makes clear, live now for then;
The ‘right’ behaviours now are not what they seem.
The values of the eternal kingdom, only, endure,
And every knee will bow, and all empires will fall.
The man who invests everything in the present life,
Will stand before his Lord with absolutely nothing at all.
At eventide, He will examine thee in love, and be sure:
A merciful heart will reap a harvest that will endure.