MERCY


This is Krystle and Clotide. Krystle sells fair trade products (including beads handmade by Clotide) for a company called Trades of Hope. Krystle is in Haiti right now, visiting some of the artisans and learning how the products are made. Krystle says Clotide's children are able to attend school because ordinary people like you and me buy her beads. 



One thing I love about Krystle is she's just an ordinary wife and momma like so many of us. And every time she sells a journal or a scarf or a hat or a necklace she talks about the women who make them. She prays for these women. She loves them.

Our world needs JUSTICE. We need big solutions to big problems. Justice will happen when we commit to see change, and when we commit to do big things and support big ideas. Communities will have access to health care and education, children will drink clean water, human beings will be freed from slavery when we all fight for it.

We all can't travel to Haiti or other countries to help. And sometimes in my everyday, small, gray cubicle life I feel overwhelmed. I can barely keep my household together, let alone change the world. I buy fair trade products when I can, and I give to organizations that are working for change, but slowly I begin to believe the lie that I have to do 'big' things to make a difference.

Can I tell you something I'm learning?

JUSTICE starts with MERCY. 
MERCY changes things.

What is MERCY? We sing about it, we talk about it, sometimes we even ask for it.

Like I said before, I'm no biblical scholar, but here is what I know:

1. Mercy is kindness, compassion, or showing favor. In the bible one form of mercy is described as bowing the neck or head. Another part of scripture uses the word mercy that at it’s core means ‘womb’. Are you getting a sense of what mercy is?

2. Mercy is more than just action. Mercy begins in the heart, from a place of love and compassion. It’s more than just giving money or speaking a kind word.  It's more than just buying a pretty bracelet. It is loving someone from the inside out.

3. Mercy is most powerful when it is least expected and least deserved. 

MERCY CHANGES THINGS.


It does not matter who you are or what you do, you have the power today to show mercy. In fact I would go out on a limb and say there are ways that you can show mercy that no one else can

If you don’t, it won’t happen. 

Mercy can change everything for someone. And isn't that the point? The small things matter. Mercy matters. Don't believe the lie that you can't change things TODAY, where you are, with what you have in your hands. Let mercy start where you live. Let it start with you.

YOU CAN. 

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