The God of Compassionate Action

Arise, Lord! Deliver me, my God! I pray. My son lifts his mouth in a half-smile at me over dinner and says, “It’s okay, Mom.” “No, it’s absolutely not okay!” I belt out, weeping furiously. “It’s wrong.” It isn’t fair.

A young man down the block is bullying my son, and I’d like to take some angry-David-in-the-Psalms action out on that boy. Mama’s on a rampage, and I’m digging David’s call for God’s jaw-striking and teeth-breaking deliverance against his enemies in Psalm 3, ready to pour some of that out on my enemy, who has threatened to hurt my son with his fists. 

I’m a pacifist, an unwavering advocate for peacemaking and nonviolence. But right now, I’m angry, and sheltered beneath that rage is fear for my boy, the tender spirit I’ve raised and praised and guarded these last 14 years. How dare anyone come after my son simply for existing as himself, for being different than how a bully thinks he ought to be?

God is the God of justice, and in times like these, I find great comfort in that. Right now, I could use some meted-out justice. Some burning of the impurity that threatens my son. In the Old Testament, in the presence of God’s holiness, anything that was not pure and good was reduced to ash. That’s the work of the refiner’s fire, a fire that burns away the residue of falsehoods and lies from our lives to reveal our true essence as worthy and beloved sons and daughters of the Risen One. For those of us who willingly submit to God’s refining fire, the heat can be excruciating, but the purification from what enslaves us brings freedom and life. 

To be fair, no one passes the inferno on their own.  That we aren’t reduced to ashes is evidence enough that God is also a God of mercy.

So where does that leave me, beloved daughter of the Risen One, who celebrates God’s mercy but wants to see His justice, who is held in the embrace of the merciful Lord who describes Himself as “the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin”? The same just Lord declares in the same breath to Moses, “Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation” (Exodus 34:6-7 NIV). 

I’ve been called by my Lord to love my enemies and to pray for those who persecute me, to be perfect (complete, mature, lacking nothing) just as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:43-48). But my love for my son is a fiery furnace of its own. At the confluence of God’s mercy and justice and my own anger, fear, and commitment to follow Jesus, where do I go?

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus shared an answer in the parables of the compassionate employer (Matthew 20:1-16), of serving masters (Luke 12:35-38), and of the noble vineyard owner and his son (Luke 20:9-18). In the face of people who took repeated advantage of God’s great mercy and benevolence, God keeps holding out, patiently hoping there will be love. Perhaps now the people will be merciful. His compassion and mercy keep rising anew every morning, and He calls us to that same compassion and mercy. 

Jesus has an answer, too, for the woman caught in the act of adultery and her accusers. Is adultery against God’s law? Yes. Have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God? Yes. The answer is both/and. This is wrong, and I love you. Now go and sin no more. Now turn. I am the compassionate and merciful God whose burning fire of love will refine you until you are made complete and whole in Me.

In my clenched fist, fury and ravenous hunger for justice and vengeance now squeezes the life out of any sense of empathy or compassion I might have for this neighbor boy. By remembering that hurt people hurt people, one by one my fingers are pried open. I’m able to wonder: What burning ache sizzles so intensely inside the bully that the only way to soothe its sear is by lashing out at others? Hurt people hurt people. (For a great resource on how hurting people hurt people, click here.)

Knowing this, it’s my calling as a follower of Christ to not repay evil for evil but to do what is right, to strive to be at peace, to be a peacemaker who lives out of the love of Christ, the One who provides the firm foundation on which I can stand and declare, I am a child of God. No slander against me or my loved ones can stand the heat of that burning conviction.

There’s still a (large) part of me that would like to light a real fire underneath the neighborhood bully. You know, just a little fire. Enough to get his attention. But as Proverbs and the apostle Paul say, “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” That sounds to me a whole lot like God’s refining fire working through our acts of loving-kindness.

The radical justice and mercy of Christ calls me to “overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21), no matter how difficult that may seem at the moment. In place of my clenched fist, I am called to live with an open hand, offering healing from trauma, compassion for the hurting, love where none has lived. We’re called to advocate for those who cannot defend themselves, which, in my small globe today, means speaking truth to power, calling a school principal, equipping my children with the building blocks of a faith foundation that, when tested, can stand. 

Wherever the truth is revealed, good can move, healing can happen. May I never grow weary of doing good in the name of the One who made a way for both justice and mercy to reign.

—Written by Sarah Wells. Used by permission from the author. Click here to connect with Sarah.
Check out Sarah’s book: The Family Bible Devotional and watch for The Family Bible Devotional Volume 2 – releasing in Spring 2022.