Skip to main content

A Sackful of Mercy!

Thanks be to God, through Whom we have such overflowing consolation in this pilgrimage, this exile, this present misery. I have often exhorted you never to forget that we are pilgrims, far away from our native land, heirs who have been thrown out of our inheritance. For those who never experience desolation cannot know consolation. And that is why people who live in the world, absorbed in its affairs, do not seek after mercy, for they do not feel their misery. But listen, you to whom it is said, and not in vain, "Be still and known how gracious the Lord is". Listen, you whom worldly interests do not hold back; listen, you who really know what exile means. Here is your comfort : help has come down from heaven! The kindness and love of God for mankind have appeared".

The kindness was always there, for the Lord's mercy is eternal; but it was hidden until "His love for mankind appeared . Before that, it was promised but not felt, so that many did not believe in it. But look! He no longer promises peace, He sends it; He no longer predicts it; He presents it to us. God the Father has sent a sackful of His mercy to earth: a sack that must be torn open through Christ's suffering, so that the price of our redemption may pour out of it. It is only a small sack, but it is full. "Unto us a small child is given", yet "in Him dwells the fullness of deity". For "when the fullness of time had come" , the fullness of deity also came. He came in flesh to show Himself to people living in the flesh; and His love for mankind appeared, so was there for Him to commend His kindness to me, than by His taking my flesh - my flesh, not the flesh Adam had before he fell? What could mightily declare His mercy as this act of closing Himself with our misery? And the smaller He made Himself, the kinder He showed Himself; the smaller He becomes for me, the dearer He becomes to me.
Bernard of Clairvaux
(Source: Semon on Titus 3:4)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I am what I am by Gloria Gaynor

Beverly Knight closed the opening ceremony of the Paralympics with what has been dubbed the signature tune of the Paralympics. I had no idea Ms Knight is still in the singing business. And clearly going by the raving reviews she will continue to be around. One media source says her performance was so electric that "there wasn’t a dry eye to be seen as she sang the lyrics to the song and people even watching at home felt the passion in her words" . The song was Gloria Gaynor's I am what I am . Clearly not written by Gloria Gaynor but certainly musically owned and popularized by her. It opens triumphantly: I am what I am / I am my own special creation / So come take a look / Give me the hook or the ovation / It's my world that I want to have a little pride in / My world and it's not a place I have to hide in / Life's not worth a damn till you can say I am what I am The words “I am what I am” echo over ten times in the song. A bold declaration that she ...

The Humility of Newton

Thou hast honoured me. Thou hast given me a tongue and a pen, many friends; (Thou] hast made me extensively known among thy people and I have reason to hope, useful to many by my preaching and writings... It is of thine own that I can serve thee. And if others speak well of me, I have no cause to speak or think well of myself. They see only my outward walk; to thee I appear as I am. In thy sight I am a poor, unworthy, unfaithful inconsistent creature. And I may well wonder that Thou hast not long ago taken thy word utterly out of my mouth and forbidden me to make mention of thy Name any more! JOHN NEWTON ( Source : Wise Counsel) Newton wrote these words addressed to God in his diary in 1789. In that year, Newton’s fame had grown significantly because of his publishing ‘ Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade’ and his appearance before Her Majesty’s Privy Council appointed to investigate the slave trade.  I find Newton’s words quite challenging. The words reveal a heart truly sh...

Incarnation and Modernity

[The Bible] resituate modernity's prejudices within a wider context from which they were originally wrenched, showing them to be reductive heresies of a more complex biblical reality. So whereas modernity privileges an unchanging a-historicity, in the incarnation God enters history at a particular moment to gather a people to be with him not in a Greck eternity of unchanging timelessness, but in a biblical eternity of never-ending and ever-renewed intimacy and relational richness. Whereas modernity subordinates the particular to the universal, the Bible perfectly marries the universal "image of the invisible God" together with a particular first-century Palestinian Jewish man. Whereas modernity seeks the abstract over the material and finds itself painfully akimbo between the twin idols of materialism and immaterialism, in the same gesture the incarnate Christ validates material reality and prevents his followers from ever worshipping it. Finally, whereas modernity secks ...