God's Mercy and Forgiveness

[Sword of the Lord]

Guthrum, a Dane (i.e. Viking) heathen: He desecrates a church, and then lifts his arms to the heavens and says, "If you are here, God of Rome, strike me down." He waits a few seconds and nothing happens, and he says, "I thought not." And then he proceeds outside to murder villagers.

This scene in The Last Kingdom, while scripted for television (but having no doubt happened in reality numerous times, in some form or another), made me think of God's amazing and merciful patience and love for humankind. So many of us so often get overwhelmed by human emotion and chemicals in the brain and react in anger when someone wrongs us. Sometimes we even react so violently that we either seek or achieve revenge. God has endured us patiently each and every moment of every single day, with billions of instances of offense towards him each and every day, for time uncountable, and he has been merciful over and over and over again. Our Lord and God Jesus Christ on the Cross spoke the words, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," and I feel that humankind doesn't understand just how profound those words are nor do we understand the depth and mercy of God's forgiveness.