“Yet even in those days,” declares the LORD, “I will not destroy you completely.” – Jeremiah 5:18

Today’s Scripture Reading (February 13, 2014): Jeremiah 5

William Shakespeare wrote in his comedy “The Merchant of Venice” that -

The quality of mercy is not strain'd.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.

It is almost a perfect description of the character of mercy. It does not work if it is forced. Mercy is a gentle shower that falls on us. And I love the Shakespeare’s concept of mercy as being twice blessed, blessing both those on the receiving end of mercy and those on the giving end. It would seem that we are no closer to the character of God than when we extend mercy.

There is no reason that God should not have destroyed Judah.  According to Nahum, God had promised to make a full end of Nineveh (Nahum 8.) There is absolutely no reason that God should stop his hand with Judah – and yet that is precisely what Jeremiah says God will do. It is one of the most predictive passages in scripture, one nation is exterminated and the other is brought to the verge of extinction only to be extended mercy and allowed to come back to life.

True mercy is only available from God. But mercy also needs a human conduit to work through. For Judah, even though the Babylonians brought the exile, there was mercy. The people were taken away, but they were also protected by Babylon. The Babylonians educated them and allowed the Jewish people to play significant roles in their government. And in the reign of the Persians, that mercy that started with Babylon was brought to its full effect by the Persians as Judah was sent back home. But the other side of the reality is that there was no one there to extend that same kind of mercy to Nineveh and the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrians simply disappeared from the pages of history.

Mercy flows, it drops like a gentle shower. First it flows from the hand of God onto our lives. But mercy is never complete until it flows out of our lives and onto the lives of those around us. And in that moment we are the ones who are truly twice blessed, because in that moment we are both the ones who have received mercy, and the ones who have given it away.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 6