Christmas Candle Scripture 10 – Merciful

1. Compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm: 
2. Preventing something unpleasant or provides relief from suffering.
3. Synonyms – leniency, clemency, compassion, pity, charity, forgiveness

When I hear the term mercy, the image pops in my mind of someone who is being punished or harmed by someone else and begging for mercy. I can think of a thousand movie or tv scenes where someone is mugging someone or robbing a home and a parent is begging the person to have mercy and not harm their child. There are also times when someone has been mean to someone else and when the someone else is exacting their revenge, the person who ‘wronged’ them begs for mercy and forgiveness. It’s really quite interesting how we as a society are so willing to inflict harm on someone else, but when someone inflicts harm on us, we immediately call for mercy. Maybe if we all practiced mercy a bit more life would be easier and less painful for everyone.

To me, mercy isn’t just about refraining from harming someone we have the power to cause pain and suffering to. Mercy is also about helping those in need and providing relief from suffering. It pretty much goes along the same lines as compassion. There are many societies that view someone’s suffering as being vengeance from God and a punishment for something they or someone in their family have done wrong. Sure, a lot of suffering comes as a consequence of an error in judgment or a major infraction, but sometimes suffering comes because of the choices of others. So, in my opinion, who are we to judge whether or not the suffering of others is justified in God? Aught we not to be like the Savior and offer help and guidance wherever we can? Is this not what Jesus Christ Himself did when He was on the earth?

Another factor in being merciful is forgiving those who have wronged us. It’s so easy to get angry and think about ways we are going to get back at people who have hurt us or in some way caused us a financial, physical or employment setback. Sure, it can be nice to think of ways to get back or show them up. But, really, who are we hurting by engaging in this type of behavior? By doing this all we accomplish is building resentment within ourselves. Sometimes it is better to acknowledge that something happened, accept it and move on. Most of the time, small offenses are an unintentional result of a miscommunication and can be cleared up by a simple conversation and explanation of why it was offensive. Sometimes this doesn’t work and all you can do is let it go and walk away. But when it does work, the end result is greater respect and understanding by both parties.

I’ve been reviewing other websites to get insight into how other people view mercy. One website told a story of an employee making a sizable mistake that resulted in several days’ worth of work for the firm being lost. When an employee admitted it was most likely she who committed the error, instead of just firing her, her supervisor sat down and had her show him how it happened. This led to discovering a programming error that could have caused the same mistake to be made many more times. By following this course of action, the supervisor showed the employee mercy when he was well within his rights to fire her. But he made the effort to figure out why the mistake happened and to see if there was a way to prevent it in the future. If my hunch is accurate, she probably became one of their better employees because she was thankful for how the situation was handled.

Most of the time when something happens, if we just stop and think about it for a minute we can come up with a merciful way to act. Of course, the more serious offenses (assault, murder, larceny, etc) need to be dealt with according to the law, but the way we act towards the offenders can still be merciful. The more you treat others with respect and kindness, even in the face of an offense, whether real or perceived, the more others will grow respect and honor you. Not necessarily honor with adulation or ceremony, but people will regard you as a person who they can come to in time of need and they will respect your judgment. The more merciful you are towards other people, the more you become a better person.