Dear God, you know this, but I’m just learning it. Since the early 1900s, Catholics have had a specific celebration for your “Divine Mercy.” My wife has taught me a little about it recently, and I just read about it on Wikipedia. One line from the Wikipedia entry that I liked was, “The primary focus of the Divine Mercy devotion is the merciful love of God and the desire to let that love and mercy flow through one’s own heart towards those in need of it.”

My wife’s friend, Kristin Ashman, painted the image above. When I saw it I made it the wallpaper on my phone. Then my wife actually got me the print above as a gift. I am looking forward to hanging it on my office wall when I get to work in a bit.

But back to the concept of letting your love and mercy flow through me and to others. I have a pastor friend who describes this concept as having a leaky bucket. When we are full of you, water will leak out of our bucket and onto those with whom we come into contact. In a final act, your dead body released blood and water when pierced by a spear. This image represents that as the mercy flowing out of you through your sacrifice of death on a cross for me.

Father, help me to be leaky today. Help me to be so full of you, Jesus, and your Holy Spirit that you lap over the sides of my bucket and leak out any holes in it. When I think about the “P.S.P.S.” prayer I prayed yesterday, I ask that you be with me in my prayers for others, my service to others, my conversations and “persuasions” of others, and anything I do that costs me for the good of someone else or some cause. I want to be a conduit of your divine mercy–not only receiving it, but channeling it through my life to those around me. Help me to do that effectively for the sake of those around me and your glory.

I pray all of this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen