Max is in jail. He deserves to go to the electric chair for the evil and wrenching pain he has brought into the life of his family and community. He’s brilliant, but with a sick mind. Manipulative, insensitive, egotistical, he continues to live.

Where is God’s mercy?

It’s there, still reaching out to Max, giving him another chance to choose a better way, unwilling that he should die an eternal death.

Sweet Jim, kindness personified, is dying. His family already grieves over the loss of someone they love so much.

Where is God’s mercy?

Right there, comforting and providing even as Jim’s earthly life slips away.

We can’t understand this from a human perspective, but God is faithful. He knows why He must give Max another chance and why Jim’s time on earth is up.

Because His every act is merciful (even the eventual destruction of the wicked), because He sees all the connections and implications of events, and because His timetable is continually being adjusted in view of human freedom of choice, we can know we are in the hands of a loving God whose mercy is just and whose justice is merciful.

God can’t stop tragic choices people make because they are free, but He has ways unknown to us to bring something good out of everything.