Seven Times, and the Family Says Enough

Everybody has gone and he is doing the washing up because doing the washing up is a way of not going to bed yet.

His cousin said it at the table, in front of his mother, which is the part that will keep him awake. She said: "You know what this is now? At the beginning it was Christian. Now it is just stupid. There is a difference and somebody has to say it to you."

And his aunt did the small nod. And his brother in law looked at his plate in a way that was agreement.

The brother is not there, because the brother is never there.

It is the money from the van, which was three years ago, and it is the thing he said to their mother in the hospital corridor, and it is the two Christmases, and it is the phone going straight to voicemail for nine weeks at a stretch and then a message at half past two in the morning that says nothing much.

And every time, he has gone. He has answered. He has driven. Last February he drove ninety minutes at six in the morning and got there and the door did not open and he sat outside for forty minutes and drove home and told nobody, except that he told his wife, who told nobody, and somehow the family knows anyway because families do.

He rinses the same plate twice.

Because here is the thing. Half of him agrees with his cousin. Not the loving half, the tired half, and the tired half has been getting louder for about a year, and it says: she is right, you are not being good, you are being useless, and everyone can see it.

If you have been forgiving somebody longer than the people around you can tolerate hearing about, you know that sink. And you know the sentence: maybe mercy is just what I call it when I cannot do the hard thing.

What the word actually blesses

Let me stand at the sink and say the low thing, because you have not said it to your wife and you certainly did not say it at the table.

The accusation is not that you are wrong about your brother. The accusation is about you. It says your mercy is a character weakness wearing a Bible verse, and it landed hard because you have been quietly wondering the same thing since about last February at six in the morning outside a door that did not open.

So let us go to the sentence.

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.Matthew 5:7

Blessed first. Not admired. Not effective. Blessed means God's favor is resting on that person, His face is turned toward them. Jesus stands on a hill, names a group and says God is toward these ones.

Now merciful. The word is about compassion that acts. Not feeling sorry for somebody, doing something about it. It is the word used for the Samaritan on the road, and it is the word used of God constantly, and in every single case there is an actual cost paid by the one showing it.

Notice what is not in the definition. It does not say the merciful person is naive. It does not say they cannot see. Mercy by definition requires you to see clearly, because you cannot be merciful about something you have not registered. A man who does not know what his brother did is not being merciful, he is being unaware. You know exactly what he did. Three years, a hospital corridor, two Christmases. And you go anyway. That is the word.

You are doing the thing that word describes, and it requires clear sight rather than the absence of it. Matthew 5:7 blesses the merciful, and mercy is compassion that costs and sees, and it is the Holy Spirit whom Scripture names as producing longsuffering and gentleness in a person, so what your cousin called a weakness has an author.

Mercy and a boundary are not opposites

Now the honest part, because your cousin is not entirely wrong and it would be cheap to pretend she is.

Mercy is not the same thing as having no limits. Those two get welded together, in families and in churches, and the welding does damage in both directions.

Jesus forgave without limit and He also walked away from towns. He told people to forgive seventy times seven and He also said what to do when somebody will not hear, and it involves distance. Paul talks about restoring a man gently and also says to withdraw in some cases. There is no version of the New Testament where mercy means a person must remain available to be harmed.

So both things are true and you have to hold them. You can go on forgiving your brother completely and still not lend him money. You can love him and not answer at half past two. You can drive the ninety minutes and also tell him, out loud, once, that the thing he said in the corridor was a wicked thing to say. Forgiveness is about what you have released. A boundary is about what you will do next. They are two different departments and your family has been treating them as one, and honestly so have you.

You have been forgiving and being available at the same time and calling both of them mercy, and only one of them is. Scripture keeps the releasing and the arrangement apart, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives wisdom to a man who asks, which means the arrangement is a thing you are allowed to think about rather than a loyalty test.

And if there is anything in this that touches somebody's safety, yours or your mother's or anybody in that family, that is not a mercy question at all. That is a thing to say out loud to somebody who can act, today. Mercy has never once meant leaving a person unprotected.

They shall obtain mercy, and who that is really about

One more piece, and it is the one that goes home with you.

They shall obtain mercy. People read that as a trade, as though mercy were being banked. It is not. Jesus is describing family resemblance again, the way He does all through that list. The merciful are the ones who will recognize mercy when it comes to them, because they know what it is. A man who has never given it does not know it when he receives it, and often refuses it.

So the promise is not that you get paid. It is that you are the kind of person who will be able to take it.

And you will need to. Because the tired half of you that has been getting louder for a year is going to need mercy of its own, and it is going to need it from God rather than from that table, and a man who has been driving ninety minutes at six in the morning for three years knows exactly what it costs the one giving it and will therefore be able to receive it without arguing.

You have the capacity to receive mercy when it comes, because you know exactly what it costs the one giving it. Matthew 5:7 links the giving and the obtaining as a family likeness rather than a transaction, and it is the Holy Spirit who bears witness that you are His child, which is the same resemblance from the other side.

I am not going to tell you what your brother does. I do not know and nobody at that table does either, however certain they sounded. What is written is what God calls a man who keeps going.