Faith in Mercy

It seems to me that faith is only possible in that emptiness of heart that comes from surrendering what we believe into pure trust. "Faith is not about certainty, but about trust. If we could prove it we would not need faith." (Jennifer Kavanagh) And mercy? "Mercy is the length and breadth and height and depth of what we know of God - and the light by which we know it. You might even think of it as the Being of God insofar as we can possibly penetrate into it in this life, so that it is impossible to encounter God apart from the dimension of mercy." (Cynthia Bourgeault) 

We can only seek God, surely, insofar as we acknowledge our own emptiness, our own unknowing. It is this existential lack that is at the heart of the Jesus Prayer, and the reason that for many years I have tended to use the longer form of the Prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." 

Psalm 119:176 (NIV) reads,  "I have strayed like a lost sheep. Seek your servant, for I have not forgotten your commands." Perhaps this is closer to the mark. Mercy is perhaps not so much about our seeking God as it is about him seeking us.

Laurence Freeman writes, 

We discover that, in a certain way of seeing, change is the only constant. In that paradox we find a portal of mystery and our search shifts into another perspective. We seek not answers or explanations but God...

From this change of seeing things we develop deeper self-knowledge. This leads to horizons where self-awareness merges with the knowledge of God, even with an at first disturbing sense that it is God’s knowledge of us is that is the starting point of every search...

Truly, as Martin Laird says, "... the sense of separation from God is itself pasted up out of a mass of thoughts and feelings. When the mind comes into its own stillness and enters the silent land, the sense of separation goes."

All this talk of seeking and journeying is, like consciousness itself, a metaphor for the ineffable, for the ground of being itself from which we cannot possibly be separate. It is all a matter of faith; of giving up thinking we know, and finding we are known.