Series of Reflections on Divine Mercy (8)

How Big Is God's Mercy? Children's Edition

Imagine you had a jar of sweets, and every time someone was unkind to you, you took one sweet out and threw it away. After a while, the jar would be empty, wouldn't it? That's how our kindness sometimes works. It runs out. We get tired. We say, enough is enough.

But God isn't like that.

God's mercy isn't kept in a jar. It doesn't run out. It doesn't get smaller the more it's used. In fact — and this is the wonderful, almost impossible thing — the more you need it, the more there is. Like a candle that gives its flame to a hundred other candles and yet burns just as brightly as before.

You might think: but what if I've been really, truly naughty? What if you've been mean to your brother, or told a lie, or forgotten to be grateful? Surely God must get fed up eventually?

Here's the secret. God's mercy is bigger than your worst day. It is bigger than the longest list of mistakes you could ever write. You could fill every notebook in every school in the whole world with the things people have done wrong — and God's mercy would still be bigger. Not because the wrong things don't matter, but because love is stronger than all of them put together.

Think about how the sun works. The sun doesn't save its light for the tidy gardens and shine darkness on the messy ones. It rises, and it shines on everything. That is what mercy is like. It rises every morning, whether we deserve it or not.

Jesus once told a story about a father and his son. The son ran away, wasted everything, and made a terrible mess of his life. He decided to crawl back home, expecting nothing — just hoping perhaps to sleep in the barn. But the father saw him coming from far away, ran to meet him, and threw his arms around him before the boy had even finished his sorry speech. That running — that is what mercy looks like when it moves.

So when you make a mistake — and you will, because everyone does — don't hide. Don't think God has turned away. He hasn't. He is already running towards you.

That is the logic of God's mercy. Not you must be good enough first. But rather: come home. Just come home.

For His Mercy Endureth For Ever

Lord, we praise You — not because we have found the right words or been good enough, but simply because You are good. We have forgotten You, and You remembered us. We have wandered, and You waited. We have come back with empty hands, and You have filled them.

For every morning that came when we did not deserve it, for every kindness that found us when we were lost, we praise You — not with perfect hearts, but with honest ones. You are good, Lord, and Your mercy does not grow thin with our forgetting. It endures for ever.

Amen.

Fr Jude Mukoro, MBACP, FHEA (20/03/2026).