And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 17 And he was teaching them and saying to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” 18 And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching. 19 And when evening came they went out of the city.
What we we make of the moments where Jesus is not nice? When Mercy itself seems be wild?
I said I think of Mercy as Revelation and Gift. Christ, the Lamb of God and Light of God.
Mercy as His Beauty, Goodness, and Truth,
Mercy as Cleansing, Provision, Exorcism, and Rest.
Mercy is the friend of broken minds, traumatized bodies, and wounded souls.
But it is the enemy of pride and lies.
Mercy is our friend, and yet Mercy is the enemy of our hardness of heart. What a strange, wild thing.
It takes Mercy
To heal our minds, bodies, and souls,
And drive out pride and lies.
I’ve felt I’ve had to learn this slowly, the Everyday Rhythms by which I develop the habit of being with Jesus, deepening in my friendship with His Means of Grace, growing in the Fear of the Lord, and learning what this Ordinary Life of hearing, prayer, and offering is like in the shrieking fog and impenetrable wilderness.
The habit of being with Jesus will do something to us. My friendship with His Means of Grace, my friendship with His Gospel and His Spirit, has become my friendship with my broken mind, my traumatized body, my wounded soul, and misguided world,
I’ve thought of this, what Mercy is an enemy of and a friend.
We must not always trust our broken minds, our traumatized bodies, our wounded souls, and this misguided world. But we cannot follow where they want to take us. But we are, in a deeper way, their friends. We desire their salvation and their good.
But pride and lies must be destroyed.
This Everyday Rhythm of Scripture, Prayer, and Service has been–and continues to be–the painful cleansing of my hardness of heart.
It has been painful, cleansing of treasured lies.
Collaboration with a Mercy that is the friend of brokenness and the enemy of darkness.
