Mercy!

I once read the true story of a preacher was organizing an evangelistic outreach using small acts of kindness to demonstrate Christ's love. He phoned several neighborhood grocery stores and Laundromats for permission to do specific services.

On one call, the employee who answered the phone hesitated, then said, "I'll need to ask the manager, but first, let me make sure I understand: You want to clean up the parking lot, retrieve shopping carts hold umbrellas for customers, and you don't want anything in return."

"Yes, that's right," the preacher replied.

After a few moments the employee returned to the phone.

"I'm sorry," he said, "we can't let you do that because if we let you do it, we'd have to let everyone else do it, too!"

(Ann Jeffries, Kansas City, KS Christian Reader, "Lite Fare.")

Now why did that store respond like that? Because NO ONE does stuff like that!

This church was obviously out for something… an ulterior motive. And the grocery store was right. The church did have an ulterior motive - they wanted to reach their world for Christ and the tool they were using was something called “showing mercy.”

What exactly IS mercy? Mercy is:  a blessing that is an act of divine favor or compassion (that’s what God does) and it is also … compassionate treatment of others because of his divine favor (that’s what Jesus-followers do).

Basically, mercy is the act of getting your hands dirty helping others. Mercy is where a person visits the shut-ins, feeds the hungry, clothes the naked. This is giving your offering first and making a point to give over and beyond. Mercy is when is follower of Jesus is doing the love of Jesus. And they do this act without expecting to be paid to do it or recognized.

You know I love ya, Don