HIEROGLYPHS
Shattered Glass & the Light Burden of Mercy
Saturday. November 16th. 2024.
Took my students1 on the downtown streets with leaders from our local mission that day. We met people with actual problems. Handed out some care items, snacks. Found out their names. Looked them in the eye and offered a bright-eyed “good morning” to them. It seemed to take a few moments for most of them to interpret our greetings as standard humanese.
Clothes tattered, as if hieroglyphs of their unraveled souls.
I prayed for Clarissa, and then for Martin.
God had something He wanted Martin to know. I did as I was told.
Down one alley to the left, we met a guy named Tomas who had been cooking up and using not too long before we arrived. Shattered glass paraphernalia and the sharp aroma of amphetamines cut through the atmosphere around our peaceful little battalion.
We told them all about Jesus. Prayed for them to experience God’s reality in their lives, for Heaven to break in.
Every one of them were reminded that there is a home and a new life waiting for them at the mission discipleship program. I hope they listened.
One of our girls cried. Overwhelmed at the brokenness we encountered. The day has stayed with me these last few months, stirring up sobered reflection on Jesus’ words in Matthew 25:
34 “Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; 36 naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? 38 And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? 39 When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ 40 The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’ ”
— Matthew 25:34-40
Earlier in Matthew, during His Sermon on the Mount exposition, Jesus makes a compelling series of statements, not least of which is the proclamation: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Matthew 5:7). Reverse-engineering from chapter 25, we find the outworking of that declaration here. In real-world lingo, Jesus’ definition of mercy is simple.
Mercy is affirming God’s infinite value in broken people through wholistic, all-encompassing and generous kindness.
What is the value of a soul?
One beaten down, infected, desensitized and languishing in darkness?
Priceless, right? Don’t we believe that? We should. I should. And by “believe,” I don’t mean passively acknowledging the theological reality, but embracing the Way of Christ in practical ways of embodying His mercy to hurting humans within arms reach. Reading the hieroglyphs of their story, whatever they appear to be and however gruesome or uncomfortable the experience for us.
There’s a person underneath it all. And they’re worth our time.
Walking this out might mean feeding the hungry in your neighborhoods, or volunteering to go help victims of the LA fires like those with CityServe, or spend time praying with the homeless and addicted, doing some work in your local mission or any of a plethora of things the Spirit may lead you to do. But getting off of our high horses and choosing mercy is key to being fashioned into the image of Christ.
Alexander Pope captured the heart of mercy well in his poem “The Universal Prayer,” particularly in the stanza:
Teach me to feel another's woe,
to hide the fault I see,
that mercy I to others show,
that mercy show to me.2
The thing about discerning hieroglyphs: it takes time.
Time to humble oneself and level our eyes with others. Like Lewis once taught, “A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”3 I would argue that the way we “look up” and see Christ is by seeing others — those desperate for a touch of God’s goodness that each of us carry as ambassadors of the Good News of King Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:20).
Here’s the question for us today: what can I re-prioritize in my life to enact a Biblical missiology for the last, the lost, the least? As one of our youth group kids said at lunch afterwards when asked what stood out most about the outreach, she said “how easy it was.” It’s true. His burden really is light.
Spend time with an addict. Pray with a homeless woman. Grab lunch with the poor (and foot the bill). Many entrenched in darkness are longing for God’s mercy to reach them through you. Remember, you’ve been shown great mercy — the kind you could never repay.
May we in turn look for more opportunities to live externally what we believe internally. One of the coolest things about doing so? It’s not that hard.
To find out more about resources, change for your city or to donate to relief efforts, click the link for info about CityServe:
If you’re in the Bakersfield area and are looking for volunteer opportunities, connect with the Mission at Kern County here:
High school pastor, here.
Rogers, R. W. (1955). Alexander Pope’s “Universal Prayer.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 54(4), 612–624. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27706655
Lewis, C.S. (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis.” Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 114.
There’s a person underneath it all 👏🏼 we are still praying supporting those in California!