Monuments of God’s Sparing Mercy

Dear Brother,

I heard about your incident at the cottage earlier this week. In this facebook generation, events are sometimes shared, it seems, even as they are unfolding. Our daughters heard the story from their cousins, and they shared it with us. From what I gathered, a family was travelling through and their car broke down close to your cottage. You helped them by making arrangements to fix their car, opening your home to them, feeding them and sharing the gospel in word and deed. “Mercy and truth (were) met together” (Psalm 85:10) in your acts of kindness.

That situation is not unlike one my family and I experienced, though we were on the receiving end of acts of mercy. During Christmas break, while traveling through a small hilly town in western Pennsylvania, our van broke down. We were stranded, the girls were scared and cold, and we were without a cell-phone signal. I knocked on the door of the only house I could see for miles. A tough-looking man, with a cigarette hanging out of a mouth half-filled with yellow rotting teeth, opened the door. In a smoke-burnished voice, he asked how he could help and immediately let us inside his house. This unassuming Good Samaritan invited our family inside while he and I spent the better part of a bitterly cold afternoon making arrangements to fix my van.

In reflecting on these events, I realize that the real story is not about you or the man who helped us, nor is it about us undeserving, distressed recipients of mercy. It’s HIS story, filled with merciful providences, unfolded in the book of our life experiences, just as all of history is His-story. God is often pleased to display His perfect mercy through His choice imperfect agents. God’s “tender mercies are over all His works” (Psalm 145:9). I am reminded, whether sharing or receiving mercy, that we daily are, as Matthew Henry wrote, “monuments of God’s sparing mercy.” God’s tender, abundant mercies and compassions toward you and me and all of His children are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22). “There’s wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea,” so begins the hymn we often sang in church when we were younger. 

Someone once defined mercy as “God’s goodness or love shown to those who are in misery or distress, regardless of what they deserve.” These temporary distresses from which we are daily rescued remind us of the spiritual misery from which we have been eternally delivered by our merciful Savior. My family certainly felt miserable and in distress; though, in light of eternity, we experienced only a minor irritation. Yet, in reality it was a gift from God; for God was merciful to us, who deserve nothing less than eternal death. He delivered us out of that temporary hardship, He protected and provided all our needs.

Though my family certainly didn’t undergo undue hardship that day, I was also reminded that God’s mercy often shines most brilliantly when one is in the darkest shadows, when things seem to be at their worst. “The deeper the wells the brighter Thy stars shine. Let me find Thy light in my darkness,” states the Puritan prayer. And we know that even when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, our merciful Shepherd will be with us. We both heard stories from our parents about the horrors they and many of their generation underwent during World War II. As you know, our father and uncles experienced the sweetness of God’s mercy in the bitter terror of Nazi work camps. History is replete with examples of the fragrant ointment of God’s mercy poured upon His children while suffering severe hardship in a multitude of forms, “sorrowing, yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10).

Brother, I pray that both our families would recognize God’s mercy in all of His dealings with us to whom “all things work together for good” (Romans 8:28). I pray, in the words of Matthew Henry, “Do us good by all the providences we are undergoing, merciful or afflictive. Give us grace to accommodate ourselves to them, and by all bring us nearer to Thee, and make us fitter for Thee.” May we see Christ, the Fountainhead of mercy, in all our giving and receiving of mercy, remembering that our merciful Savior said, “Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it unto Me” (Matthew 25:40).

Your loving brother in the flesh and in our Eldest Brother,

Randall