But nothing happened. There was no warmth or forgiveness in her. Struggling with herself, she took the man s hand. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that overwhelmed me. There it is.
Mercy begets mercy.
The person who lives with mercy will have mercy. It is not a neat balancing of the books, because mercy does not seek balance or parity or fairness. Instead, we are invited to take our part in the free-flowing dynamic of God s mercy. We receive mercy and pass it on to others like two steps of a dance, like a beautiful echo of grace. God s mercy does not merely extend into our lives, but also seeks to have us respond by being conduits of that mercy so that it can extend into the lives of others.