God's Mercy Reaches All but at Different Degrees

Today we are no better or no worse than our forebears were. We can only wait for God's mercy to reach us wherever we are, however we are and whomever we happen to be. We can't speed up the arrival of the blessing or help. We can only keep on calling on his name until he comes to our rescue.

Until we receive God's favor, mercy and help we can only cope and hang on with whatever advantages our genes and ennvironment have equipped us with and keep on seeking for whatever source of help available.

Some wait longer than others before they are blessed. Some are still waiting for God's mercy to rescue them. Some have grown weary of the endless waiting. Others sadly fade away and for them God's mercy did not come in time. These cases are regrettable and can't morally be explained by any stretch of the imagination.

As we wait, those of us who are willing and able--not all are capable of rendering useful help--can fill in for God until he decides to take over. In those cases we act in God's stead, for better or for worse. Our imperfect assistance to those in great need may turn out to be the mercy they were waiting for all along. However, since we are limited in our resources the divine help the person in need requires is beyond our reach.

We then become something akin to persons who are called to provide parental care, in loco parentis, to children needing adult care when legal guardians are gone missing. We become "in loco Deus" or acting and functioning in the place of God for that individual.

Waiting for God's mercy. That's all there is.

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In Loco Deus

After reading about an Asian child who lives in a garbage dump with his adopted mother and who feels that it would be a disadvantage, they both think, to leave the security and cast-off food in the garbage dump that arrives daily in trucks, I realized that there are poor children in my own country whom I could and should reach out to, if I am unable to help this particular boy and his mother in Asia.

I could pray for them, I could send money to Asian charities, I could ... I could ... I could. It then struck me that I, you, we, have the need or possibility of being not in loco parentis, but something grander for children and people who have nothing and may very well never have anything in their lives. For the first time in my life, I understood that I need to be in loco deus (in the place of god.) Or would it be too bold to capitalize not just the "g," but the whole word, thus becoming "in the place of GOD." I think I finally got it, what it means to be human and see so many people hurting. I and the help I may be able to give, with whatever limited or generous means I may possess, may be the only god or God that may ever come to rescue of people in dire need.

I understand who I am now. I understand what I'm supposed to do and who I'm supposed to be.