Blessed Are the Merciful

"Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy."—Matthew 5:7

When the telephone number 911 is dialed, merciful people drop what they are doing and hurry to where help is needed. Our e-units and ambulances are mercy in action! Once, when we lived in Des Plaines, Illinois, people were talking together outside of church after a worship service. Suddenly, a man many of us knew as Grandpa Meyer slumped down. No one knew what was wrong, but the local e-unit was called. They responded quickly with life-support. The people of that e-unit may well have saved his life. That was the mercy of God in action!

Let us thank God for doctors, nurses, and many others who choose their life work motivated by a desire to help people who need help! COVID-19 makes doctors and nurses more appreciated than ever, and they are more in need of prayer than ever.

Jesus was mercy incarnate! He told the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) and instructed us, "Go and do like that."

My Uncle Harry Lemmen (my mother's brother) had a heart of mercy and spent his life as a male nurse in Pine Rest Hospital near Grand Rapids, Michigan.

William Shakespeare wrote,

"The quality of mercy is not strained. It drops as a gentle dew from heaven upon the place beneath.

"It is twice blessed. It blesses him that gives and him that takes.

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes the throned monarch better than his crown. His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, the attribute of awe and majesty wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings. but mercy  is above this sceptred sway; it is enthroned in the heart of kings.

"It is an attribute of God himself. and earthly power doth then show itself likest God's when mercy seasons justice."

(from Merchant of Venice, Act 4, scene 1)