The Weight of His Mercy

I was listening to Kim Walker sing “How He Loves Us” the other day and there is a line that goes, “Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy.” I had heard that line a number of times before and considered what it meant in my head, but the other day it really hit my heart that there is a weight to His mercy. It is so heavy, but it isn’t a crushing weight. The very purpose of it is to bend us toward God.


I think the weight is more specifically about the effective influence of His mercy. Mercy itself is the withholding of deserved punishment. When we consider the seriousness and magnitude of sin and what we deserve because of it is death (Romans 6:23), then God’s mercy takes on a whole new importance. Suddenly that mercy, that He so readily gives, becomes a reflection of His intense love for us and the evidence that He desires that we not be separated from Him. But there is still the need for justice. The price for sin still needs to be paid. Because of God’s holiness, we cannot enter His presence soiled by sin. There had to be a way to atone for that, to reconcile us. That’s where Jesus’ crucifixion comes in. His death on the cross is the singular, most beautiful crashing together of both God’s justice and mercy. After all, the whole of the Gospel centers on that event.


But I digress, what Christ did and God’s mercy should weigh so heavy on our hearts that our only response can be to humbly submit to Him and surrender all of us to His call. For some that’s when the crushing comes. Psalms 51:17 says, “The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.” This gets into a whole other blog (I kind of wrote one that addresses that awhile back…HERE). The point is, there is heaviness to God’s mercy, an influence purposed on drawing our souls to Him. It is meant to weigh on our hearts so much so, that our only response can be to approach Him to receive the joy and peacefulness of that unmerited favor called grace. And the beauty part about His mercy, it begins “afresh each morning.” (Lam 3:23)


In awe of His mercy,
Bruce