O Father, how we need mercy.

We sin every day.

We fall short of your command to love you with all our heart and soul and mind and strength.

We are lukewarm in our affections.

All our motives, even at their best, are mixed.

We murmur.

We are anxious about tomorrow.

We get angry too quickly.

We desire what ought not be desired.

We get irritated at the very attitudes in others that we have displayed five minutes before.

If you do not show mercy to us, we are undone.

O God, let us see the mercy of Christ and savor it for what it is.

Grant us power to comprehend his love.

Incline us to read and ponder the stories of the mercy of Jesus in the Gospels.

Let us so admire what he did that we imitate him.

But let it be much more than external imitations.

Let it come from the heart where we have been broken for our sins and where we have come to cherish mercy and live by mercy and hope in mercy and long for mercy….

Fulfill in us the command to do justice and love mercy.

Let us love showing mercy. Make it so much a part of us that it is who we are.

So unite us to Christ that his mercy is our mercy …

He is all we have to give in the end….

John Piper