Mercy Above The Heavens

“He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.” (Ps 103:10-11 AV)

 

The statement here is a remarkable one.  As far as the heavens are from the earth, that is the amount of mercy God shows us.  Putting it another way, we deserve the judgment of God to the height of the heavens but we only get the height of the earth.  When we think of that which we deserve and that which the LORD retrains, we cannot help but feel the blessed love of God shed abroad in our hearts and on our lives.  When we stop and take stock in how many ways and how many times we have failed to live up to the wishes of our Father, it gets easily overwhelming.  The vast wickedness of the human heart is beyond computation.  What we shall do is ponder the wonders of mercy without allowing the condemnation of sin to overshadow that mercy.

When I look over my life, I can remember many times the mercy of God came down when I deserved to suffer much greater consequences.  That which I remember the most are the times I transgressed the law as an adolescent and for whatever reason, I did not reap that which my evil required.  There were times I threw snowballs at cars and never got caught.  Or, the one time I did, the driver cursed us.  But he did not press charges.  There were a couple of times I shoplifted and the store manager never pressed charges.  There was the time I broke windows in an old factory and the police simply asked us to move along without informing our parents.  There were many times I failed to obey a teacher, religious leader, and my parents; yet they did not come down hard.  There were those several times I got a ticket for one thing or another and the court let me off.  When I look at all that I have done, it befuddles me why the LORD didn’t let the hammer fall.  I have done all those things and much, much more.  Some are so horrible they are not appropriate for public knowledge.  All this and more, yet the LORD forgives and restores.  There were a couple of times I got into fights.  Two in the neighborhood and one at school.  Those involved could well have tried to charge me with assault, even though I was defending myself.  So many times I did the wrong thing.  Yet God, in His patience and mercy, brought correction equal to what I could bear and not equal to what I did.

Often we can allow the mercy of God to be forgotten simply by the sheer amount that we need.  Paul tells us the goodness of God leads to repentance.  As we realize just how much God has forgiven and how restrained He has been, the Holy Spirit works on our proud and rebellious heart that we might yield even more to the control of the Spirit.  By yielding to Him, we overcome that which plagues us most of all – sin.  But it starts with a heart of understanding and gratitude at just how much mercy God has shown.  The other day, I took my in-laws to Port Washington, WI.  There is a public park on a bluff that overlooks the lake.  We talked about how far it was the horizon.  Some have told me that at level with the sea, seventeen miles is how far you can see.  That is a long way off.  Yet, the mercy of God is far beyond that.  No manmade telescope can find the edge of the universe.  To our ability, the universe is unbounded.  That is how much God loves us and forgives us.