Daily Manna · Day 238 · August 26
Blessed Are the Merciful
“Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.”
A hand closing around a piece of paper.
The story Jesus told about this comes later in Matthew. A servant is forgiven a debt of ten thousand talents, an unpayable figure, more than the annual tax revenue of whole provinces, and walks straight out of the room and takes a fellow servant by the throat over a hundred pence, which is roughly three months' wages. Real money. A genuine debt, not a trivial thing to be owed, and the story only works because it is genuine.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. He is not saying you purchase pardon by being nice; the Beatitudes describe the people of the kingdom rather than the entry fee for it. What the parable adds is why the two clauses belong in one sentence. Mercy is a current, and you are standing in it or outside it. The man in the story did not lose his pardon by being cruel. He demonstrated that he had never understood what he had been handed.
Which is the truth, and it is uncomfortable in precisely the place you knew it would be. The hand that stays closed around what somebody owes you is the same hand you will be holding out later, when you are the one who cannot pay.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 238 is Waiting for News (Psalm 112:7).