Gift of showing mercy

And then lastly, in an incomplete list, is the gift of mercy. Romans 12:8 says, The one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. In the New Testament, mercy is the outward manifestation of pity. Pity is what you feel in your heart; mercy is what you show and what you do. First of all, you pity somebody and then you show mercy to them. So, mercy is always a practical thing, an outward thing. You can see it and you can experience it—it is pity in action. God pitied us, but that would have been no good to us, unless God had had mercy on us. Thus, he not only pitied us, but he gave his Son to save us from our sins. That was his mercy in action.

The Good Samaritan is the classic example. It may well be that the priest and the Levite, on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, pitied the wounded man lying at the side of the road. They may have pitied him. They may have looked at him and said, Look at that poor man! Isn’t that awful? They pitied him but did not show him mercy. The Samaritan stopped and showed mercy to him.

We read in the book of Acts of Dorcas. She was full of good works and acts of charity. And even though we are all to be like this, for some people it seems to be a particular gift or endowment. Some of God’s people, for example, are just not comfortable around the very elderly or the chronically infirm. They love them. They pray for them. They pity them, but they are just not good with them. They do not know what to say. They do not get the tone right. They are not sure what to do when they are with them. On the other hand, there are other people of God who are just really, really good in that setting. You see them with old people, the infirm, and the people who are unwell. They have a gift. They say the right thing. They do the right thing. They have got a tact. It is wonderful to see. There are people who are just good with lonely people. Others love them, and have a burden for them, but they are just too pushy, too intrusive, too insensitive, or too careless. They just cannot get it right. Then there are others, perhaps they have been lonely themselves, who got this gift.

A lonely person would feel, I could talk to that person. I would love to spend time with them. They encourage me. We are living in an increasingly lonely society. It is a society, in many ways, full of needs. And remember, this was the first responsibility of the deacons. Their first responsibility was to relieve human need; to administer the finances and the gifts of the church in such a way that would relieve human need. There is a lot of mercy shown in the church, but there is need for much more to be shown. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

There are many other serving gifts. Faith is a serving gift. Leadership is a serving gift. I have given you a sample. But I hope you have something to think about now, something to take to yourself, perhaps to put into practice. Sometimes we stress the negative side; and serving is indeed hard—it is not easy to be a servant. But it is also very, very satisfying. It provides us with purpose and meaning.

Remember, as one writer says, In the kingdom of God, position is nothing, faithfulness is everything. He took the form of a servant, therefore God highly exalted him.¹

Edward Donnelly