Daily Devotional
"You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?"
Matthew 18:32-33
Paul Tautges writes: the heart that has been forgiven much loves much. When we forget God’s grace, our hearts become proud, and we who have been forgiven much may act like one who believes he has been forgiven little. That is the diagnosis of an unmerciful heart. Not meanness. Memory failure.
It is possible to receive enormous grace and live as though you received very little. The unmerciful servant in the parable was not a villain from the beginning. He was a desperate man who had received an extraordinary gift – and then walked out of the room and promptly forgot it. The gift did not change him because he did not carry it with him. He received it and moved on.
Spiritual forgetfulness is one of the quiet crises of the Christian life. We receive forgiveness, grace, mercy, patience – and then the ordinariness of the day absorbs all of it, and we are left with nothing to draw from when someone else needs what we have been given. The disciplines of remembrance are not optional for the merciful life: the Lord’s Table, prayer, the reading of Scripture, confession — these are the practices that keep the memory of grace alive.
The sermon connected the first beatitude to the fifth for this reason: the poor in spirit become merciful. When you know your spiritual poverty – when you have not forgotten what you cost God — you see the weakness and sin of others differently. You do not condescend. You do not ask how they could possibly do that. You know the answer. You know the same soil is in you. And that knowledge softens the heart in the direction of mercy.
Today's Challenge
Where in your life are you acting like someone who has been forgiven little? What spiritual practice could help you remember more consistently what you have actually been given?
Prayer
Father, I am quicker to forget your grace than I am to extend it. Forgive me for the times I have received your mercy and then withheld it from others. Restore my memory. Let the cross be vivid to me today -- not as a distant doctrine but as a present reality that shapes how I see the person in front of me. In Jesus' name, Amen.
