Psalms 86:3–6; 103:8–11, 17–18; 119:58

 

Be merciful unto me, O Lord: for I cry unto thee daily.

Rejoice the soul of thy servant: for unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul.

For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee.

Give ear, O Lord, unto my prayer; and attend to the voice of my supplications.

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The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.

He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger for ever.

He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.

For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. . . .

But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children’s children;

To such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them.

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I intreated thy favour with my whole heart: be merciful unto me according to thy word.

One of the unfortunate legacies of traditional Christianity in an earlier era is the image of a wrathful, vengeful, angry God who is something like a mean-spirited umpire who is anxious to call us out on strikes in baseball or give us a red card in soccer. What a tragedy this is and what a heartbreak it must be to Him who is the Father of us all.

Obviously our Father in Heaven has expectations for us and can be disappointed with our actions. With severe transgression He can be genuinely angry, the way any loving parent might be angry at the foolishness or dangerous choices of a child, but He is very slow to anger and He will not “keep his anger for ever.” Above all, He is merciful, and that is because He is good. He is always ready to help and to forgive.

If we could improve our understanding of the Father, grasp His divinity, and embrace His compassion, we would be a lot more inclined to embrace that divinity and deserve that compassion. Every one of us will have occasion to utter “the voice of [our] supplications” in prayer, and sometimes that will be earnest, anguished, painful prayer. The promise of the scriptures and the eloquence of the psalms is that God is “good, and ready to forgive.” We can lift up our soul unto Him for the glorious reception that soul will receive, knowing with absolute certainty that He “will not always chide” but that His mercy is “from everlasting to everlasting.”