Merciful and Kind to All

This morning I felt I should read from Luke 6:35-36 NIV:

[35] "But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. [36] Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful."

As I was reading these verses, I thought of the fact that these verses explain one of the significant ways God is different than us. We often like to ascribe human character and thinking to God, but these verses demonstrate a very non-typical behavior, that of treating enemies and ungrateful people kindly. In fact if we take the thought a bit further, God is kind and merciful to people who hate Him, who deny Him, who are completely ignorant of His existence, and those that have been deceived and are worshipping some other god. God is merciful to all and He paid for the sin of all people whether good or bad.

God is also eternally optimistic. We might, in our humanness, give someone the benefit of a doubt if they are confronted with love or the correct path and make a bad choice. We might even try to love them, or extend them mercy and forgiveness for a few months, maybe even a few years before we give up on them and cut them out of our lives. But God is merciful every day of our lives. He extends His love to us everyday, and is never willing to give up on a person. He treats all of us with kindness, those that love Him and those that are ungrateful and wicked.

Finally to be merciful, literally means to be full of mercy. Here is the common translation of mercy, from Webster's dictionary:

1 a : compassion or forbearance shown especially to an offender or to one subject to one's power; also : lenient or compassionate treatment b : imprisonment rather than death imposed as penalty for first-degree murder
2 a : a blessing that is an act of divine favor or compassion b : a fortunate circumstance
3 : compassionate treatment of those in distress

The operative word in all three definitions is compassion - which according to Webster is a "sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it." In these verses, Jesus is talking about the wicked and ungrateful, those we don't like, and our enemies, and a call to us to extend compassion to them. We are called to treat them as we would a loved one, to have compassion for them, to be sympathetic towards their difficulties and to do what we can to help! Wow - that stretches me outside my comfort zone!

Oh Lord, I will need Your help to walk in this. The good news is that You are this way everyday, and so You have plenty of practice and can offer plenty of help!