Lent 4 | Mercy
The Word
“Have mercy on me, O God,
according to Your steadfast love;
According to Your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
Surely goodness & mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
The Wondering
Through these long days of Lent we may feel that we have lost our way in the darkness, tempted to given up on our lives. We forget that all this while the heart of God has been “so much on us.” When at last we cry out, “Mercy, God, mercy!” our prayer is received not by a distant Divinity reluctant to forgive but by a loving, longing Parent who has never, not for one moment, forgotten us.
“Christian, dost thou not perceive that the heart of God is set upon thee, and that He is still minding thee with tender love, even when thou forgettest both thyself and Him?” writes Puritan Richard Baxter, “Is he not following thee with daily mercies, moving upon thy soul, providing for thy body, preserving both?” Newly aware of God’s mercies, may we reach out and “let our souls get up to God, and visit Him every morning and our hearts be towards Him every moment.”* May we come home again.
What draws your attention away from God’s daily mercies and toward fear and despair?
Can you adopt a practice by which you “let your soul get up to God” today?
*Richard Baxter in John Baillie’s A Diary of Readings, Day 310
The Wisdom
“The Garments of God” by Jessica Powers
God sits on a chair of darkness in my soul.
He is God alone, supreme in His majesty.
I sit at his feet, a child in the dark beside Him;
my joy is aware of His glance and my sorrow is tempted
to nest on the thought that His face is turned from me.
He is clothed in the robes of His mercy, voluminous garments
not velvet or silk and affable to the touch,
but fabric strong for a frantic hand to clutch,
and I hold to it fast with the fingers of my will.
Here is my cry of faith, my deep avowal
to the Divinity that I am dust.
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Here is the loud profession of my trust.
I will not go abroad
to the hills of speech or the hinterlands of music
for a crier to walk in my soul where all is still.
I have this potent prayer through good or ill:
here in the dark I clutch the garments of God.