“When mercy stole quietly into my soul, the trembling stopped and the tears—which in my self-estrangement had dried up—began to flow again. The touch of infinite kindness to my nothingness wasn’t mere tenderness; it was suffused with a gentleness that transcended tenderness. And yet the experience was so subtle that mercy entered my heart unnoticed.
“The shabby streets of my soul were still littered with the debris of vanity, dishonesty, and degraded love. It wasn’t as if a sanitation worker had suddenly appeared to rid the neighborhood of every mound of unsightly garbage. When mercy came in the back door, my character defects didn’t bolt out the front door; they went underground, but they didn’t leave (and still haven’t). What happened is virtually impossible to explain—and it’s better for that. What I intuitively apprehend now, in retrospect, is that mercy kissed my brokenness, Too-Much-Love (John 3:16) cradled a wounded child, and for a biblically valid but inexplicable reason it was okay to be bent.”
-Brennan Manning, The Wisdom of Tenderness, p. 143-144
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