Read
For I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.
Hosea 6:6 (NIV)
Reflect
Every family is different, but all families have their issues. It would be unusual if they didn’t. After all, any group of people is bound to have differences of opinion on various issues, and those differences can lead to conflict that manifests itself in a variety of ways. Some families even have the so-called “black sheep” — a person who others feel has strayed from the flock in one way or another and from whom the rest of the family remains distant.
This has sadly even happened in my family, and I can’t say we always handled it correctly. Looking back on those moments, it’s easy to see how petty some of our differences were at the time, though we were far too close to things to see the flaws in our own actions. It felt right then, but now it’s clear that the better path would have been to love the person even when we didn’t agree with everything that person was doing.
I’ve seen that play out again recently in the life of a friend who had one sibling ostracize another because of extreme differences of opinion. Sadly, the angry sibling became very ill and died before there could be any reconciliation. Since then, I’ve found myself wondering how often we cling to anger, distance and self-righteousness while opportunities to make peace quietly disappear.
There are clues throughout the New Testament about how Jesus approached people who had gone astray. There’s the story of the woman caught in adultery and thrown at His feet. After confronting the hypocrisy of those who wanted her condemned, Jesus turned to her and said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” He offered grace without pretending the sin didn’t matter.
There’s also the story of Matthew, the tax collector. Tax collectors were reviled in Israel as collaborators with Rome and were widely associated with corruption. Yet Jesus went to Matthew’s home and ate with him, much to the disgust of the Pharisees. Jesus answered them with words from Hosea: “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.” Then He told them, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” The problem with the Pharisees was not simply that they knew God. It was that they thought they were spiritually healthy while looking down on those they considered beneath them.
Then there’s the parable of the Prodigal Son. The young man broke his father’s heart by taking his inheritance early and squandering it. Only after losing everything did he finally return home. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him, ran to him and embraced him before the son could even finish his confession. The father did not deny what had happened, but neither did he treat his son as disposable.
Jesus also told the story of the unforgiving servant. A servant was forgiven an enormous debt but then refused to forgive a comparatively small debt owed to him. His refusal to show mercy exposed how little he understood the mercy he himself had received. Jesus ended the parable with a sobering warning about the danger of refusing to forgive from the heart.
We serve a God of love, mercy and grace, and He calls us to pursue those qualities in our own lives. That doesn’t mean mercy requires pretending everything is fine. Jesus never confused mercy with approval. He called sin what it was, but He also refused to treat sinners as disposable. In the same way, forgiveness does not always erase consequences, restore trust overnight or require us to remove healthy boundaries. But neither should Christians become comfortable with bitterness, permanent estrangement or the desire to see someone else punished.
Today, I pray that you are at peace with your family and that they are happy and healthy. But if there is a “black sheep” in your family — or if, in someone else’s eyes, that person is you — perhaps today is the day to consider whether there is a step you can take toward healing. That might be a phone call, a message, an apology, an offer of forgiveness or simply a willingness to stop rehearsing an old grievance.
No depth of our sin kept God from extending grace to us in Christ. His mercy reached us before we deserved it and before we fully understood how much we needed it. We cannot force reconciliation, and some relationships may require wise boundaries, but we can choose not to close the door on mercy.
It could be that someone is waiting for the first sign that the door is still open.
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Reflection copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt.
