Looking back

‘Jesus . . . said, “Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.”’ Mark 5.19

If Jesus told you to do this I wonder what you would say?  Although you know that God has been good to you, I wonder whether you would find it challenging to say exactly how?

There is a long tradition in Christian spirituality of ‘examining’ ourselves.  We often take this to be an invitation to dig around for hidden sins, but an excellent aspect of self-examination is to look for touches of God’s mercy and to spend time recalling both the general and specific things that he has done for us.

God is merciful.  He does things for us that we certainly don’t deserve and that he doesn’t have to do – but he does them all the same.  Many of these things may well happen without us paying too much regard to them, and we may not even recognise them as touches of his mercy.

Take a few minutes to think about the past day and begin to call to mind touches of God’s mercy – things that have happened which you neither deserved nor ‘earned’ – and give thanks for them.

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