I've had the opportunity to watch this in practice through my friend Renee and her daughter Delaney. As Delaney suffered her second bout of cancer, went through treatment, and eventually learned the awful truth, she and her family faced a lot of tough times. But when I look back on it, I am amazed how quickly God helped them come to peace with the diagnosis, and then, as the symptoms mounted, how quickly he intervened at every step to minimize Delaney's suffering. She went into hospice in August and is in her final days -- possibly hours -- now, and the times of actual suffering have been so few and so brief. Mostly, God sent her angels to bolster her spirits and ease her physical pain and prepare her for her final journey. This has been the best object lesson about the mercy of God that I have ever experienced.

Of course, God pours out his mercy in less dramatic ways every day. I believe that in every job loss, in every broken romance, in every disappointment and hurt that life doles out, God is there providing mercy and comfort to those who are open to receiving it. All we need to do is accept what is offered.

There's another part of the Isaiah reading that really spoke to me, too. The reading tells us: “Zion said, 'The LORD has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.' Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you.”

This is a powerful image! We all know the intensity of the love of a mother for her child. Otherwise submissive, mild mannered women will take huge risks, will lift an automobile, will fight tooth and claw, if they perceive their child to be in danger. It's how God made us. In fact, it's hard to think of a more primal instinct than that of a mother for her child. And here, God is saying that a mother is more likely to forget about her child than he is to stop loving us.

I have long thought that in our culture, we should more often use a mother's love to illustrate the love of God. Of course, God is without gender and on one level, it shouldn't matter is we are saying God's love is like that of a father or a mother. But in our culture, our images of mother's love are much more unconditional. We think of the mother who works hard all week so that on the weekend, she can take the bus to the prison and visit her adult son there. She hates the crime he did, but she never hates him. He is her child, and she will love him to the end of his days. THAT is a great illustration of our heavenly father. Too often in our culture, images of a father's love are, in fact, conditional. We hear stories of a father, disappointed in his offspring's choices, saying, “I have no son!” Never would you hear that from a mother.