What Does Gods Mercy Look Like?

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This morning I keep returning to the Parable of the Good Samaritan, because it refuses to leave us comfortable. Someone asks Jesus, “What do I do to inherit eternal life,” and instead of a checklist, the answer arrives as mercy. Real mercy. The kind that interrupts your plans and rearranges your heart. In Swedenborg’s language, heaven is not a destination we earn but a life we practice, a way of loving that slowly becomes who we are. That is what this story opens up. The clergy walk on past. The Samaritan stops. Mercy here is simple, beautiful, and incredibly inconvenient. It is costly. It asks us to listen to the better angels of our nature, to give of our heart, to expand our perspective while narrowing our focus to the person right in front of us. This is not a courtroom mercy handed down from on high. It is compassion in motion. And Jesus is clear. This is what eternal life looks like. Mercy breathed out. Mercy breathed in. Difficult, challenging, and in the end, deeply life-giving.