A "Tip" for Mercy

I would bet that you’ve experienced bad customer service. Am I right? That waitress at the restaurant who was rude to you, the telemarketer who overbearingly wanted you to become a customer, or the guy who interrupted you to say, ‘okay, thanks, see you later!’ and then hung up on you. These kinds of situations can leave horrible aftertastes, inspire great anger, and encourage frustration. Just thinking about a time when this has happened to you can raise your blood pressure!

What exactly is it that makes us so upset when dealing with these problems? Why do we want to call the man back and yell at him or hide under the bed? What makes our faces flush when a member of the wait staff talks on a cell phone for 20 minutes before checking on our table?

I’m sure there’s probably a biological reason for our ire or humiliation, but let’s talk about the soul-part of the equation. My husband and I have been teaching our daughter about the “equal and opposite reaction” rule. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, basically. The main problem with the experiences I mentioned above is the indifference we suffer. Humans are not robots (which you’ve probably noticed.) We do not toe a steady, unchanging, unfeeling line. We are designed to have feelings. When we are treated without care, we feel a flood of emotions which fills the void that came from indifference, or the lack of emotion. An equal and opposite reaction, right? (Well, roughly.)

And then, there’s mercy.

Ugh – mercy is vindication and revenge’s ultimate foe! There’s nothing like leaving a penny tip or hanging up the phone on the telemarketer without a word to make you feel some instant gratification – or so you think at the time – but what the situation actually calls for is mercy.

Mercy is not an equal and opposite reaction. Mercy is giving someone what they don’t deserve – or, in keeping with the physics analogy, mercy is redirecting the bad trajectory of angry or humiliated feeling into a positive trajectory. Now, imagine, when a heavy projectile is in flight at a high speed, what happens when you try to alter its course? It’s not easy to control, to ‘pull up’ when you are being dragged down. When you are hurt, you want to reach out and hurt back or reach in and hold onto that hurt. Mercy takes the hurt and sets it aside instead of giving it away. Mercy fills the void with blessing instead of cursing. Mercy redirects the course of thought, feeling, and action from a downward pattern to an upward pattern.

It’s hard to be kind to someone when we feel humiliated by them, isn’t it? Hard to love someone who couldn’t care less about us. And yet, mercy is the example our Heavenly Father has set for us. Mercy is mentioned a ton of times in Scripture, one place being Psalm 31. In verses 21 and 22, the Psalm reads,

21 Praise be to the Lord, for he showed me the wonders of his love when I was in a city under siege. 22 In my alarm I said, “I am cut off from your sight!” Yet you heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help.

God took what seemed to be the inevitable and made a new course of action. The Psalmist was under threat of siege and yet was saved by God’s hand, by Him stepping in and bringing blessing where there had been alarm.

This is what we are called to do. When faced with bad situations, we are to reach for God’s hand and live life giving mercy to others. Whatever weight and speed the trajectory of your initial response is, God can definitely change your course! There is a saying by John Watson that goes like this: “Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard battle”, where “pitiful” probably means: “Full of or characterized by pity; compassionate, merciful, tender” as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary. While this could be interpreted to mean that we should use giving folks the benefit of the doubt as a reason for mercy, it can also be interpreted to mean that every person struggles in life, every person has problems, all are caught in a war between right and wrong, Truth and evil. Sometimes, we make good decisions, sometimes not so good decisions, but be “pitiful” to all, that we may emulate our Lord by showing mercy.

Mercy is not the end game, though. Once you are able to grant mercy to someone, the door is opened to do much greater things! Perhaps people will recognize mercy is being granted and see something special in you that they want to have. Maybe they will trust you enough to confide in you whatever might be their problem. Mercy is just a starting point! What will we miss if we cannot achieve this first step?

I close with the following from Psalm 79, verses 8 and 9:

8 Do not hold against us the sins of past generations;

may your mercy come quickly to meet us,

for we are in desperate need.

9 Help us, God our Savior,

for the glory of your name;

deliver us and forgive our sins

for your name’s sake.

May we seek the mercy of our Father and be merciful to others for His name’s sake. Amen.