For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways.

Isaiah 55 v8

In our minds, we often want to pit Justice against Mercy – as if they sit on either side of the scales. As if they are somehow in conflict.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Justice is not held back by a dam of mercy until it breaks forth.

Mercy does not exhaust itself.

Justice is not restrained by a cheap grace of our own making.

The truth is they are deep manifestations of different facets of the loving Father heart of God. It is His love that bestows mercy. It is His love that judges evil. Justice and Mercy run and bleed together into the River of Life.

We cannot see, veiled as we are in our own mortality and futile thinking – projecting our own finite nature onto God. We cannot see – not yet at any rate – as we are seen.

Today is the moment when Justice and Mercy meet. Now is the time when we must choose how we shall respond.