The Significance of Mercy

For your name’s sake, O Lord, Pardon my guilt, for it is great. – Psalm25:11

Have mercy on me, a sinner! – Luke 18:13

It is our natural instinct to search for meaning and significance. The reality TV craze, obsession with Hollywood gossip, a billion dollar a year porn industry, a media encouraging us to live beyond our economic means even in our present recession, all these and more are attempts to manufacture purposes for us to live and work. Fancy cars, fake breasts, and black cards seem to be status symbols many in our land strive to achieve. Many of us think maybe these things will grant us the significance we hunger for, the status and acceptance we believe we need.

It is time that we as a culture are honest with ourselves and each other, these things will not and indeed cannot satisfy the true human hunger for meaning and significance. These things will not answer your calls for happiness because we are not what we are portrayed to be by our media. We are humans, and as such we are created in the image of God. We cannot help but feel that something more is in store, we seem to hear “echoes” of what should be. We are to do more than merely hear the faint whispers of justice and beauty; we are the ones through whom these are to come about. We were created for this purpose, to reflect the holy and brilliant character and personality of God. This, my friends is the Christian definition of the human.

Our need for significance is a natural one because we are significant, we are important to God’s world, but we have lost our way. Instead of carrying justice we trample it; instead of beauty we compose the most heinous of scenes. The only way we can again regain our true humanness and role as protector of this world and no longer its destroyer is to find or rather to be granted mercy. We need to seek the forgiveness of the one who we have offended; we need to be right with our Just and Beautiful God, Who has given us this great gift of life and a world to enjoy. It is mercy, not our cultural treasures that will give us purpose and joy. It is mercy we are hungry for.

Mercy comes to us sinners through the victory of Jesus. He has set a light in the darkness so that we may find our way. It is not a ticket to heaven that he offers, but a new life here and now; citizenship in his Kingdom of Shalom.