A gratuitous, generous gift.

Be merciful to me, O LORD, for you are my God; I call upon you all the day long. Psalm 86:3

The quality of mercy is not strain'd.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

I am quite sure the very folded and crumpled note that I found in the stacks of stuff starting to pile up on my teacher desk that I was trying to sort out in my lunch break yesterday would make some of those sort of teachers roll their eyes.

The “don’t ever give up” note detailed more the always smiling and laughing, and jumping and running parts of me and not so much the higher order thinking that I am supposed to be about or the fact that I told them 100 billion jillion times the difference between qualitative and quantitative data and still half of them missed it on the quiz or what the vice principal told them yesterday, that their main job in school is to shut up and listen to the teacher. And I love that you don’t call the monitor every five minutes like everyone else and your really chill and never get in peoples besniuss. And you never get anyone in trouble and your understanding and you help us whenever we need you and explain it in a way I understand your positive and pasiont and also give easy homework and when you call my parents you say good and nice stuff.

I read my old devotional favorite, Wikipedia this morning, and all about what that collective thinking had to say about mercy. And mercy is a flat-out God thing; He is where we learn all about it: benevolence, forgiveness and kindness.  In the social and legal context, mercy may refer both to compassionate behavior on the part of those in power.

And I wandered around the desert arrollo again, just as light was breaking. I sure miss swimming and especially my back is squeezing all of those nerves again.

But the cactus and rocks and birds against the dawn are nice.

And my heart sang,

His mercies never come to an end.

They are new every morning, new every morning,

Great is Thy faithfulness.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

May it be so.