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

Today’s Scripture Reading (February 23, 2017): 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 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 dare to extend mercy.

There was 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 would do. It is one of the most predictive and contrasting passages in scripture, one nation is exterminated and the other will be brought to the very edge 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 when the Babylonian Empire failed and the reign of the Persians began, that mercy that was 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 and it drops like a gentle shower. First, it must flow from the hand of God into our lives. But mercy is never complete until it flows out of our lives and into the lives of those around us. And at that moment we are the ones who are truly twice blessed, because at 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