I’d been taking photo after photo. I’d marked up my bible. I’d ferreted out Facebook posts in a crazy obsession to learn more about mercy.
On Palm Sunday, mercy popped up again on the screen during our praise and worship.
I reached for my phone to snap a photo and make some cute post for Facebook. Yet, now I don’t even remember the song.
A notice — “Moms cancer is back” — caught my eye.
I burst into sudden tears and went searching for some solace in my sweet husband’s embrace. This woman comforted and cared for me when my dad was sick and dying from cancer.
Even though a few weeks before, I’d stood on that ship deck and stared out into the deep blue ocean and gazed upon its wideness, with a drumbeat of a hymn racing through my mind …
Where is the mercy in this?
Where is mercy when you look into your grandmother’s eyes and suddenly know that she’s not who she was? When you see the fear and the total lack of understanding written deep in her eyes?
Where is mercy when the son doesn’t know whether his mother really loves him for him?
Where is mercy when the young daughter will never come home again? Or the 8-year-old is suffering from a difficult and taxing disease that has no cure?
Where is mercy when 34, 113, 9, or more are taken in a single act of violence?
Where is mercy, when day in and day out you sit alone and feel as though you are unloved and uncared for? Where is mercy when you cannot find your purpose or your place?
I wonder if on this Good Friday night so long ago — when Jesus prayed until his blood became sweat and he begged the Father to let this cup pass by him — where was mercy?
Where was mercy when he stood before the angry crowd that cried, “Crucify him”?
Where was mercy when they took his clothes, pressed down hard on the crown of thorns, whipped him into a bloody mess, hammered in nails to his hands and feet, and lifted him in crucifixion?
Where was mercy when he cried, “It is finished”?
When they rolled the stone in front of the tomb — where was mercy?
And, I wonder what do I know of mercy?
TotallyKris 