The human heart is a circus. It is wild, ravenous, messy; desperate to feel, connect, validate, understand. Some of us have learned to escape this reality (or at least hide our vulnerability) better than others. But no matter how you slice it, all of us carry within us an incredible capacity for good and also the capacity to hurt the ones we love the most; the seeds of creation and destruction.
Mercy is a constant reawakening. The blame-game – meaning our fearful and reflexive use of indignation, anger and unforgiveness: that's the stuff of emotional and mental bondage. But to have perspective - to see how much we've been forgiven, to remember how much we ache to see hopefulness in the eyes of those we've wounded - that is the stuff of freedom, the terrain inhabited by the ability to find Mercy.
No matter how horrible the offense that was done against you, there is nothing more destructive than an icy heart that refuses to forgive and refuses to identify (at least on some small level) with the brokenness of the perpetrator. To see that person worthy of love, just as we ourselves are deserving of such a wonderful thing. To see that, in our own darkest moments, we’ve done things that we’re also ashamed of – and we deserve Mercy, too.
