March 27: What Does Mercy Look Like?

This post is part of a 40-Day Prayer Journey through the season of Lent. Click here to learn more and read other posts in the series.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Matthew 5:7).

I heard a short story once of a dad and his young daughter walking past a homeless man slumped against a brick wall.

“Daddy, he doesn’t have any shoes,” the little girl says. The dad nods and keeps walking past the homeless man, but the little girl stops in her tracks. “Can he have my shoes?”

“No, sweetie,” the dad says, shaking his head as he stops too. “Your shoes wouldn’t fit him; they’d be too small.”

The girl pauses. She looks at the homeless man for a long moment. And then she turns back to her dad. “What about your shoes, Daddy?”

Now the dad pauses too. He looks down at his daughter, smiles and hugs her, and then turns back to look at the homeless man. He crouches down next to him, puts a hand on his shoulder, talks with him for a while, and then takes off his shoes and freely gives them away.

It’s a short story, but it raises an important question. What does mercy look like?

I think most people would point to a story like this or a video of someone doing something kind for a stranger and say, “This—this is mercy.” And they wouldn’t be wrong, but it wouldn’t be the full picture.

Mercy is more than handing shoes to a stranger. It’s more than giving clothes to the homeless or food and shelter to the needy. Don’t get me wrong. Those are important things—but mercy starts with seeing people for who they really are: sinful people for whom Jesus came to live, suffer, bleed, and die.

Mercy starts there. Understanding that everyone we meet and interact with in this sin-darkened world is someone who desperately needs to know the Savior Jesus and what he’s done for him or her is critical for how we act toward others. As yesterday’s post in this prayer challenge stated, “We love because he first loved us.”

God loved us first.

And his love for us influences the love we show toward others. We have been forgiven so much by our God. He loves us with an everlasting love and shows us mercy beyond measure.

We now look for ways to show that same mercy and love to others. Maybe that’s seen in providing for someone else’s physical needs—maybe it’s seen in a kind word or gesture to someone who’s hurt and struggling. But it doesn’t stop there; the end goal is looking for ways to help provide for other people’s spiritual needs by pointing them to their Savior Jesus.

Are there times when we miss those opportunities or fail to take advantage of them? God forgive us, yes. We live in a world so often distrustful of others that we sometimes fall into that mindset too. As we do, our capacity for showing mercy fades away little by little.

Dear Christian, let’s strive to see one another as our Savior sees the world and the people he came to save from sin, death, and darkness.

Let’s strive to show mercy to one another. Let’s strive to find ways to show love to our neighbor and love to our God by doing so.

Today as you pray, ask that God would move our hearts by the incredible mercy he has shown us to reflect that mercy and love to the people we meet.

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