Words woke me this morning.  They were in my dreams and the burning in my heart stayed when my eyes opened.  I've been re-watching some of my favorite sermons.  I've been laying my Spirit out, letting it become uncomfortable with the hard parts of the Scripture.  I've moved from I should pray about that to actually praying.  I want to be sharp and cunning, I want to see and hear and feel our culture through a thoughtful filter.  I don't want to be fooled.  Tricked.  Hoodwinked.

This morning the preacher reminded me that love and holy intersect at The Cross and that is mercy.  This morning I needed to hear that.  It is so easy for me to focus on one and not the other.  It is so easy for me to tell myself, The thing to do right now is to love.  Listen and love.  Even though he is off his rocker a bit.  Even though he is falling for sneaky things.  Even though he is trading gold for trash.  Just love, Tasha.  Whatever that means.  And other times, I don't want to listen, don't want to love.  I want to shake.  I want to rumble.  I want to get really loud.  Don't you know what you're saying, what you just did there?  Don't you realize how far gone you are, how terribly awful sin is?  Fool, did you forget Him completely? 

And then there is mercy.  A word I don't fully understand.  A word I am overwhelmingly thankful for.  Mercy knocks me around. Mercy takes love and holy and does something beautiful, something so beautiful that I am afraid of what life would be without it.  Mercy makes it possible to be both.  Mercy makes it possible for a Holy God to love a dirty sinner: me.

So now I am sitting here puzzling.  If mercy is The Cross and mercy is that knee-bowing-day when He calls us up to be with Him always, and if mercies are new every day, every day, then how does mercy look moving out of me?  I am thinking over what mercy is made of: the culmination of harsh justice and obscene grace.  A price was paid, a terrible price.  I did not have to pay it.  Every day I do not have to pay it and every day my sin my sin meets the cross.

You see how I am stuck here.  It is almost easy to say, you should be the love.  It is good-feeling to say, be the holy!  Righteous indignation!  But to be both.  To take those conversations and those sin moments and to say, Look.  He loves you for sure.  Loves you for always no matter what.  But on our own we're ugly to Him.  Our hearts are not good.  Our thoughts are not high and true.  He killed Himself so He could love us without compromising who He is.  He did that.  So take up the position.  Root yourself down here at The Cross, in mercy and the world shifts a little.  Sharpens.  And now you're back in the race.  

This must be the power of mercy-- it keeps bringing us back.