Waiting To Be Gracious

"...the Lord waits to be gracious to you; therefore God will rise up to show mercy to you.

...blessed are all those who wait for God...[who] will surely be gracious to you at the sound 

of your cry; upon hearing it, God will answer you.  

Though the Lord may give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide any more, but your eyes shall see your Teacher.  

And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’ "  

(1st Reading for Morning Prayer, Tuesday in Easter Week)

Picture the Risen Christ sitting in the garden near the now vacant tomb as you're approaching him. He rises as you step before him, and you're suddenly overwhelmed in his presence with the inner sensation that every horrible thing you you've ever done, to yourself or to someone else, every unkindness, every bitter or cutting word has just disappeared. The lovingkindness of Jesus, emeth, as the Hebrew Scriptures call it -- what we would call compassion or mercy -- is almost palpable.  Even more, the conviction of your whole being tells you that this is really true: it has really happened to you.

Imagine now all the people who approach us in the course of a normal day.  What if each one of them was to find you and me waiting to be gracious, to be lovingly kind, for no particular reason than that they and you and me are who you/we are.  

"This is the way; walk in it."