A Merciful Respawn

Me: Any gamers in here?

Kids: Yeah! I love video games! I play! I’m a gamer!

Me: Yes! Fun fact about Ms. Janay. I used to be a hardcore gamer.

Kids: *silent*

Me: Oh my gosh! Y’all seriously don’t believe me?

Kid 1: Not really Ms. Janay!

Me: Wow. I’m hurt. Let me list off my gaming pedigree. Let’s start with some gaming history. Before the Switch, there was the Gameboy. I had a Gameboy before the Gameboy color came out, I had a Sega Dreamcast, an XBOX before the 360 was even invented, a Wii-

Boy Kid: Whoa. We believe you!

Me: Never doubt me again. Back to the point of my question. For my gamers, if you don’t save your progress or you start over, what happens to the game?

Kid 1: It’s completely new.

Kid 2: It’s like you never started.

Kid 3: If you don’t save your progress, you have to start over.

Me: Yes! It’s like nothing happened. It’s basically brand new. How does this relate to God? It’s not like we start a new game and lose all our progress everyday. No. But Lamentations tells us that every morning, we get new mercies.

Kid 1: New mercies?

Me: Yeah. New mercies. Lemme break it down. God’s grace is everything we receive that we don’t deserve. God’s mercy is everything we don’t get that we do deserve. Do we deserve Jesus’s sacrifice?

Kids: No.

Me: Good! But do we deserve punishment every time we do the wrong thing?

Kids: Yeah. Sometimes. To be fair, yeah.

Me: Exactly. And have you received every single punishment you rightfully deserve?

Kids: No.

Me: Exactly! That’s mercy! Not receiving what we rightfully deserve but getting grace instead. Every single morning, it’s like a respawn of mercy. We wake up and receive new mercies every single morning.

Reflect: Think about the times when God forgave you when you really deserved punishment. Take the time to thank Him for His grace and mercy. Remember, nothing can make you worthy of God’s grace and mercy outside of Jesus’s sacrifice.