The Disruption of Mercy

Religious conviction can easily become self-righteousness when it centers on exclusion. The impulse to divide the world into deserving and undeserving comes quickly, especially when pain or history is involved. Many struggle to accept that those seen as enemies are also held in divine mercy. Grace disrupts our need for control and certainty. It reaches people we think should be outside the boundaries. Resentment grows when compassion is given to those judged unworthy. But this reaction reveals more about our inner resistance than about divine justice. The invitation is to surrender the demand to be right and the illusion of spiritual superiority. What remains is a quiet, unsettling truth: compassion is not ours to withhold, and mercy belongs to no one alone.

Hold open a heart that does not withhold mercy,
even from those you find hardest to include.

(inspired by Richard Rohr, The Tears of Things)