The gift of showing mercy

Going towards people in distress and doing what eases it. Romans 12:8 names it last in its list of seven, and the one thing it asks is that mercy be shown with cheerfulness, so that help does not arrive with a sigh attached.

In an ordinary week this is the person who sits with the widow for a whole afternoon and does not look at the clock. It is whoever visits in the third week, once the first rush of visitors has stopped and the ward has become boring. It is the one who takes the call at eleven at night, and the one who goes to the funeral of somebody they barely knew because the family will be thin on the ground.

People notice it in themselves by which way they move. When somebody starts crying you go closer instead of giving them room. People at their lowest come to you, including people who hardly know you, which is puzzling until you realise they can tell. You leave a conversation carrying somebody else’s weight, and it does not put you off going back.

It is most often confused with serving, and the difference is the target: serving answers a job, mercy answers a person, and mercy will sit in a room where there is nothing to fix. It is also confused with encouraging, which wants a stalled person moving again, while mercy is content to be still with somebody who cannot move yet. The everyday mix-up is with ordinary kindness, which is asked of every Christian. What is named here is the settled habit of going where distress is rather than away from it.