Mercy

Dave Matthews is someone who hungers and thirsts for justice. It's a theme that repeatedly appears in his songs. What Dave Matthews may not realize, however, is that the justice he hungers for is what the gospel is really all about. In the song Mercy, Dave Matthews sings, "Imagine that we could get it together / Stand up for what we need to be / Cause crying won’t save or feed a hungry child / Can’t lay down and wait for a miracle to change things". And in the song that immediately follows on the album, the recurring line is, "We gotta do much more than believe if we really wanna change things." We DO have to do more than believe and pray. But, we must believe and we must pray. We do this because believing and praying is how we are properly formed into agents of God’s mercy and redemption in the world. Jesus spent his time on earth in ministry changing the world as it was at that very moment. He did not have a focus of teaching people how to go to heaven when they die. Jesus insists that God actually cares about the kind of world we have. Jesus wants us to bring the will of God on earth as it is in heaven, right now! Between now and our death, let's try to bring heaven to earth. Let's multiply mercy.