'tis mercy, all

Our church is almost finished with our 21 days of prayer and fasting, and this morning it meant having 8 kiddos ready for church and out the door by myself at 8:15...but I was not missing that sweet extra hour of focused prayer.

and I'm so thankful. 

I was sitting there in the quiet with twenty or thirty other people, all praying our hearts out, and the word that kept coming to mind was Lord, mercy.

Mercy for another long night of pain and suffering and gasping breaths for my dad. Mercy for Matt and Cindy, draining fluid and administering meds, ministering to him in every way, without ceasing, while their hearts are breaking. Mercy for Dad's heart and mind and finished body. Mercy for my sister far away and gasping for breath a different way. Mercy for my hard-hearted brother, so far from You. 

Mercy, Lord, show mercy I groaned for the whole broken situation that is death and pain and suffering.

And you know what He gave me?

The realization that my deepest prayer today, it all already is.

Cancer that eats away, fluid that drowns the lungs, brains that bleed and babies that die, children that suffer and lives brutally taken, bodies that bend and bruise and break, death...

None of that is Him, of Him, from Him or like Him. Suffering comes not from the Father, but from sin and separation and Satan....broken world, hateful enemy, broken bodies. 

But what my dad DOES have today despite all those broken things he embodies is peace, for it's all about to be stepped out of. Dad has hope, because despite deserving death and destruction, Jesus paid for eternity in a kingdom of no more suffering and no more pain. Dad has forever life, Dad has no more tears, Dad has the anticipation of, despite not living a sinless life, spending eternity in the powerful presence of the Father.

Here we each are for this drip of time, harboring all this dying and pain and brokenness and agony and injustice, and yet we are NOT alone as we walk it, and we face full joy and complete peace and new bodies and forever and forever with Jesus.

That's mercy.

Dad has worked hard and buried babies born too soon, his young wife, his dear parents and friends and family, he has known the daily, deep pain of a son so lost, he has known disappointment and fears and struggles and sicknesses and pains, and yet because of the life and work of Jesus, he's about to step into forever rest and peace and love and glory.

'Tis mercy, all...all the ways He carries us now, and all of the greater context, that vast, magnificent story of the hope of heaven. 

I begged for mercy, and in the early dark of church with the sounds of my children playing too loud in the lobby, He told me it's already here.

Praise the Lord.

I know I'm writing about this too much. But you know this is where I process the things I can't, especially while single-parenting...so....feel free to come back a different season