On The Journey Toward Becoming More Merciful

It was years ago now. I was eating out with an elderly friend and not being as attentive as I might have been to her low-grade unhappiness. In fact, to be frank, I was irritable and impatient. Then my eye caught an even more frail elder leaving his table and simultaneously scattering a handful of change across the floor. Clumsy, noisy, inconvenient to the rushed lunch crowd and the waiters serving them. But another diner, on her way past, simply bent down, gathered the change, offered it to the man, and departed without a word.
In a flash I saw my coldness at that moment, and how very near us mercy is. I know that I too act with such mercy, yet when I am caught in impatience or other dark emotions, my self-imposed exile from God's commonwealth of loving and knowing I am beloved puts me in a realm where I can even forget that mercy is possible.
But no act of kindness is insignificant. We can reveal God's commonwealth to one another without realizing that we are doing so. And when we are in exile, our darkness is, in reality, only a flash away from the love and mercy that we are always being called to live in. May our eyes and hearts open more and more to that call.

Susan M. S. Brown