My guest blogger today, author Amy Blake, spotlights an important balance point. Be sure to leave Amy a comment and check out her latest release, Whitewashed.
To me, the gospel is all about the intersection of mercy and truth. The truth is as sinners, we deserve punishment for our sin including eternity in Hell. The mercy is, as the only sinless Son of God, Jesus took the punishment for Christians and gave us His righteousness instead.
Truth: God is holy and punishes sin.
Mercy: Jesus made a way for us to spend eternity with that holy God instead of getting the eternity we deserve.
In my new adult suspense novel, Whitewashed, Patience is a stickler for truth, so much so that when her childhood friend Devon starts down the path of drug abuse, she screams truth in his face and pushes him away. As a student at Verity College, Patience encounters Lily Rose–a young woman with a bad attitude and an abusive boyfriend–and Patience again spews cold, hard truth without considering how her words might do more harm than good.
Yet when Patience endures her darkest moments, trapped by a psychotic killer and on the verge of death, she begins to comprehend the verse her old friend Mabel, a woman caught in the throes of Alzheimer’s, repeated to her the night before: “In mercy and truth atonement is provided for iniquity; and by the fear of the LORD one departs from evil” (Proverbs 16:6, NKJV).
Patience begins to understand that truth and mercy go together to make the way for repentance. As Mabel’s elderly husband Moses says, “The truth shows you the sin you need to root out, while mercy helps you do the rooting.” Patience realizes speaking the truth to Devon and Lily Rose could never be enough without mercy to help them comprehend the truth.
Just as God is a God of truth who showed great mercy to His children through the death and resurrection of Jesus, so we ought to be people of truth who show mercy to those around us.
About Amy:
Amy C. Blake is a pastor’s wife and homeschooling mother of four. She has a B.A. and an M.A. in English from Mississippi College. She contributed to Barbour’s Heavenly XOXO’s for Women, Book Lover’s Devotional, and Every Good and Perfect Gift. Amy’s short stories and articles have appeared in Focus on the Family, Mature Years, Significant Living, Vista, Encounter, and other publications. She has won awards at St. David’s Christian Writers Conference and West Branch Christian Writers Conference, and her juvenile fantasy novel, The Trojan Horse Traitor quarterfinaled in the 2011 ABNA contest. The Trojan Horse Traitor releases in November 2015, and Whitewashed, released February 15.
Connect with Amy on her website, Facebook page, and Twitter.
About Whitewashed:
Eighteen-year-old Patience McDonough has a plan. Despite her parents’ objections, she will attend Verity College in Hades, Mississippi, and live with her grandparents. She’ll complete her degree in record time and go on to become a doctor. But things at the college are strangely neglected, her class work is unexpectedly hard, Grand gets called out-of-town, and Poppa starts acting weird—so weird she suspects he has Alzheimer’s. On top of that, she has to work extra hours at her student job inputting financial data for the college—boring! But soon her job gets more interesting than she’d like: she finds that millions of dollars are unaccounted for and that something creepy is going on in the Big House basement. She discovers secrets tying her family into the dark beginnings of Verity, founded on a slave plantation, and she is forced to question the characters of people she has always trusted. Finally, confronted with a psychotic killer, Patience has to face facts—her plans are not necessarily God’s plans. Will the truth set her free?
Whitewashed is also available through Mantle Rock Publishing and as a Kindle e-book.
Great post. The story sounds wonderful!
Thanks for stopping by, Linda.
Sounds interesting. Look forward to reading it.
Absolutely. Thanks, Marjorie.
I like a story with a mystery or a twist. Sounds like a good book!
Definite mystery, Karen!
Whitewashed sounds very exciting. A good one to recommend to friends. I believe the Word says to speak the Truth in Love. We ought to carefully choose our words when sharing the Gospel. Especially to those whom may not be aquainted with the Bible.
Karen
So true, Karen. Thanks for stopping by.