One Sunday last year in the Stockbridge GA ward we discussed Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. One of the many topics we touched on were the ideas around justice and prayers for justice. My experience has been that when one cries for justice, it usually means some sort of punishment or accounting by someone else who has hurt the person praying. For our children, and now grandchildren, the idea may have been expressed in the words, “That’s not fair!”. Our normal retort as parents might be something like, “Life’s not fair.” Does this sound familiar to you?
In the tension between justice and mercy, of course it is the Messiah who reconciles these two seemingly opposing forces. In my own self-accounting I find that if justice were fully applied in my case I would owe way more than I might receive in terms of recompence. I also read in the Lord’s prayer that we should seek to be forgiven as we forgive others. Such thoughts over the years have tended to shift my personal way of thinking to seek more mercy for others and myself. I can at times judge harshly, and I can’t help but wonder if I too, then, would be judged harshly. If I am judged as I judge then I must learn to be more merciful if mercy for myself is what I seek, and I certainly need plenty of mercy.
When praying for intervention with others, then, I hope that I will focus more on mercy and less on justice (if I focus on justice at all). This sounds simple enough, yet for our naturally judgmental selves, such self-mastery may be slow in coming.
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