Lord Have Mercy

January of 2009 will always be burned into my brain as one of the worst months of my life. I was one year into a church plan with a good friend of mine, and I’d never been so poor in my life. It was hard to make ends meet, and I was just hoping we could get over the hump and not have to worry every few weeks about the church’s checking account. In retrospect, God took great care of me during that time, but I feel like I was in a constant state of stress.

It was also in that month that my father asked for all of us, as a family, to go in for his one-year check-up at the doctor’s office. This was supposed to be our celebration of him now being one year clear of cancer. Unfortunately, that wasn’t what the doctor told us. Instead, we were told that his cancer had come back and was more aggressive and all over his body. Dad was given less that a year to live.

I remember the weight of that moment. I was the oldest, and I was going to need to step up, but I didn’t feel ready. I was busy with the church, but also traveling as a worship leader to make ends meet. There wasn’t a whole lot of free time in my life at this point, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do to help my mother as she watched her husband deteriorate over the next several months. I remember being angry about everything. I was an emotional wreck. All I could feel was weight: the weight of my family, the weight of my church, and the weight of five other people depending on me to get shows planned and contracts that needed to be fulfilled. It felt like someone had planted a Mack truck on my chest.

When you were a kid, did you ever play the game “Mercy?” It’s the one where you’d interlock hands with another person, then try to bend their hands backwards until they would say, “mercy!” I felt like I was playing this game with life, and it was kicking my butt. Honestly, I really just wanted a reprieve. I needed a moment to take a deep breath and just calm down.

It was during this time that I started spending every Friday with my father. Each one was a countdown to there being no more Fridays to spend with him. I had a choice each week. I could mourn that my dad was leaving me, or I could celebrate that I had one more day. There was a peace I felt on each of those Fridays with my father, and all I can account that to was mercy from God. God’s mercy can take on many forms; forgiveness, the extension of grace, and, in my case, compassion. It was in those final months of my father’s life that I genuinely felt God’s presence and comfort when I was a ball of stress. This kind of mercy is shown in the book of Lamentations.

The book of Lamentations was written after the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem. There was very little hope for the people of Israel. They’re capital city and their temple were no more. Hope was fleeting. They felt the weight of their forefathers and mourned their loss. We read in Lamentations chapter 3…

He has made my teeth grind on gravel, and made me cower in ashes; my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, “My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord.” Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me.
Lamentations 3:16–20

You can feel the pain of the writer as he deals with all of the destruction around him. He’s struggling to find peace in the midst of all of this loss. Where is God in all of this? Why isn’t He making things better? It would be really easy to just turn your back on God and be filled with bitterness and hate. The writer takes a step back, however, and his tone changes.

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”
Lamentations 3:21–24

In the middle of innumerable loss, we see that God’s mercies are new EVERY day. It’s easy to get caught up in the moment. Our current situation can seem overwhelming and we can let distress lead us down a dark path. However, each day becomes a new opportunity; to be thankful, to serve, to live. God sees our situations, and He reaches into our struggles with compassion and gives hope. As believers in Christ, we know that our current suffering is only for a short time.

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
Romans 8:20–25

It can be really easy to wallow in our own self-pity, but God has called us to so much more, and He offers so much more! As Christians, we aren’t running a sprint. We’re running a marathon. It’s the long game, and the best part is that we KNOW we win! This doesn’t mean that life won’t hurt at times. It doesn’t mean we won’t feel the weight of loss, responsibility, or hurt. What it does mean is that God shows us mercy through His compassion for us in giving us the hope that we life for. His ultimate mercy for us is Christ. It would’ve been really easy for God to have just wiped His hands of this mess that we’ve made of ourselves, but that isn’t who He is.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
1 Peter 1:3–5

When we take a step back and look at our current situation, and realize that this only for a short time, there’s only one response…thanks. Thank you God for Jesus. Thank you God for hope. Thank you God for your mercy.