God forgives and forgets (3)

The Hebrew word for new is hadas. It doesn’t just mean again and again, as amazing as that would be. It’s new, as in different. It means never before experienced. Today’s mercy is different from yesterday’s mercy or the day before that or the day before that! Just as the seasonal flu vaccine changes from year to year, God’s mercy changes from day to day. It’s a new strain of mercy. Why? Because you didn’t sin today the way you did yesterday! Try this little exercise: figure out how old you are – not in years but in days. Whatever number you come up with isn’t just your age in days; it doubles as the sum total of different kinds of mercy that you have received in life to-date. By the time you are twenty-one, you have experienced 7,665 unique mercies. When you hit midlife, it numbers about 14,600. And by the time you hit retirement, God has shown mercy to you about 23,725 times! And His mercy for you is a tailored mercy that perfectly fits your sin, your shortcomings, your needs, and your mistakes. His mercy fits like a glove! In scripture, the word manifold means multifaceted. Mercy and grace are not the same thing. Mercy is not getting what you do deserve, and grace is getting what you don’t deserve. The apostle Peter spoke about “the manifold grace of God” (1 Peter 4:10 NKJV). Like snowflakes, God’s grace never crystallizes the same way twice. That’s what makes it so amazing!