Observation: Two blind men flag Jesus down with the words, "Have Mercy on us, Son of David!" Jesus heals them by their faith.
Application: "Kyrie Eleison" or "Lord have mercy" is one of the oldest prayers in the Christian tradition. One practice of prayer which I have found meaningful is to repeat the words "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me", over and over, until they continue on in my heart, almost without my prompting.
In the Christian liturgy, the "Kyrie" at the beginning of worship is the part where the congregation repeats "Lord, have mercy" in response to various prompts from the Assisting Minister or Cantor. I once had a debate with my dad (also a Lutheran pastor) about whether it's really appropriate, given our understanding of God's grace and love, to still be constantly asking God's mercy. My dad may have been right about this: that we should not view God as constantly punishing us with disease, famine, war, and all manner of troubles, such that we would be begging God's "mercy" each week, on behalf of a suffering world. God is not the one causing all our problems, and we certainly don't need to ask God to let up from giving the poor human race a beating. If we're doing the "Kyrie" for that reason, we may as well stop now.
But I would argue that's not what we're doing when we sing, "Lord, have mercy." Of course, we already know God is merciful. God doesn't just have mercy, God is mercy. It's not something we have to ask for, any more than we need to ask for the earth to turn, or the grass to be green. But when we do, we call to our own minds all the mercy God has had on humankind: mercy that finds its ultimate expression in the cross of Christ. To be totally honest, if we limited our prayers to only those things that we suspect God would not remember or be inclined to do, we would never pray anything except "thy will be done," and even that would be redundant. I mean, do we expect to hear, "Oh, you want my will to be done? Well, I was kind of thinking I'd let humankind do its own thing and destroy itself, but hey, I like your idea better. Let's go with that." But we pray for mercy--and for all things--to help ourselves remember what God has done and is doing, and tune us into the places where we can join in.
Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have Mercy on Me, a Sinner. Amen.
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