Jesus said to his disciples: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. “Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”
What if your teacher handed you the first two pages to your physics final with the answers already calculated and said, study this. Now to make it even better, you also know that it is not cheating, because the teacher gave it to you. What would you do? If you wanted to get a good grade on the test, you would study it. No questions. You would memorize it, and pray that the remaining pages were not that difficult.
In this reading, that is what God has given us. He has literally taken a few of the pages out of His “Steps To Get To Heaven” book and given them to us and said, “study this!” However, because nothing is ever that easy, He has also challenged us to “live this.” In reality, we should look at this as an enormous gift, rather than a difficult struggle. Yes, it will be challenging, because every time someone hurts you, it will be your job to forgive them. And yes, it will be challenging, because every time someone wrongs you, it will be your job to show them mercy and not retaliate. But think of how wonderful the reward will be. Actually, we cannot fully comprehend how wonderful the reward will be, because as finite beings, we cannot grasp the infinite wonders of heaven. But it, our reward, will be better than anything we have ever experienced. Viktor Frankl, a WWII concentration camp survivor, upon reflection of his time under Nazi rule said, "In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering, the moment it finds a meaning.” That is to say, although being merciful in the face of wrong-doing or forgiving when you have been intentionally hurt is difficult and sometimes painful, these “sufferings” cease to be so painful, when we attribute meaning to the suffering, in the promise of heaven.
CHALLENGE: I challenge you today, to think beyond school, to think beyond your homework, to think beyond what you will wear tomorrow and what people will think about it. Even if it is only for a moment, think about what you “suffer” for. The goal of this passage is not only to give us instructions to live our lives full of meaning and purpose, but also to give us something to think about living for. It gives us the promise of something beyond this world.
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