A Lesson in Mercy

I received two emails telling about the words Kathy Griffin said when she accepted her Emmy recently. I don't know much about her, but I've never liked her. She's supposed to be a comedian and has a cable show about her being on the D-List in Hollywood. She may be joking about being on that list, but hearing her latest jab at Christians--Jesus in particular--I'd put her farther down than that.

The politically correct thing we are supposed to say is that she has the right to her beliefs and freedom of speech. But I'm not going to be PC because I have my rights, too.

This woman is crude and she's attacked Someone in my family--my brother. He gave His life for me, (and for her) and it pains me to hear someone attack Him like she did.

All right, so her Emmy is now her god. Let's see how far it gets her when she's really in trouble, when she needs help and not one human being can save her, and when she faces that dark night when her life is ending. Will she cry out to her Emmy to come to her aid? Or will she look up and see that Jesus is really the one she should have been thanking all those years?

Too many Christians want to see the "sinners" get what's coming to them. Jesus told a parable about men who worked all day long. At the end of a day a man came, and he got the same reward as the others. Those who had worked all day were mad. They felt they should have gotten more or that the last-minute guy shouldn't have gotten anything. Jesus asked them, Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?"

Peter said in the second epistle that bears his name: "The Lord . . . is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."

If I want to be like Jesus, then I want to see this woman, who has blasphemed my God, come to repentance and get the same gift of salvation I've had all my life.

I don't want to be like Kathy, but neither do I want to be like the workers in the vineyard who toiled all day; nor Jonah who was mad at God for saving Nineveh. I want to be like God who wanted to see all the workers rewarded, like God who saved the Ninevites, and like God who loves Kathy and wants to see her spend eternity with Him--and us.