The Mercy of God | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Here’s a wonderful story from Carol Wimber’s book, “The Way it Was.”

“Right away the Jesus Songs started coming, like a stream of sweet water. I call them airport songs because God gave them to John on his way to or from the airport. “Isn’t He?” (which keeps food on my table from the royalties) was another song written on the way to the airport on a scrap of paper.

It came the same way, all at once, words and music, but it came in a flood of gratitude for the goodness and mercy of Jesus.

John was on his way to pick up an uninvited visitor who had called the house and informed our son, Tim, that he was waiting for John to pick him up. Well, poor Tim! John was a “kill the messenger” guy. He jumped all over Tim. “Why didn’t you tell him I didn’t know he was coming?” “Because I didn’t know that, Dad,” answered a bewildered Tim. “But I’m tired, and I just got home, and it’s raining. I don’t want to go out again, Tim. Why didn’t you explain it to him?” “Dad, I just answered the phone, and said Hello. The man said you were supposed to be there to pick him up, and I said, “Oh,” and the man asked me to tell you when you came home. I said I would.”

John left for the hour and a half drive to the airport, and he felt miserable. Not about having to go out when he was tired, but because of the way he had treated Tim. He wept over it, and told Jesus how wrong, and how sorry he was, and was just planning how he would apologise to Tim, when the car was flooded with the love of God. Overwhelmed with God’s mercy, his head and heart filled with the words and music:

Isn’t he beautiful? Beautiful, isn’t he?
Prince of Peace, Son of God, isn’t he?
Isn’t he wonderful? Wonderful, isn’t he?
Counselor, Almighty God, isn’t he? Isn’t he? Isn’t he?

He taught us that sweet Jesus song the next Sunday. It is amazing how fast the Holy Spirit-given songs go around the world. They fly on the wings of the wind.”

I love this story. I love the way God sometimes responds to me with poetry and insight and blogposts when I have blown it, am feeling crushed, and full of shame. That’s when he reveals himself and his love most clearly, and blesses me with new insight into himself.

Gerard Manley Hopkins describes this

“Father and Fondler of heart thou hast wrung,
Hast thy dark descending, and most art merciful then.”

Or as Francis Thompson puts it,

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)

Cry–and upon thy so sore loss

Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder

Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

And lo, Christ walking on the water,

Not of Genesareth, but Thames!