Psalm 86 opens with a cry from the depths: “Turn your ear, O Lord, and give answer, for I am poor and needy.” It’s the voice of someone who knows their place—not in power, but in dependence. And it’s precisely this posture that opens the floodgates of divine mercy.
God’s mercy, as echoed in Numbers 14:18, is vast—slow to anger, rich in kindness, forgiving even wickedness and crime. No sin is too great, no wound too deep. But the psalm also reminds us that this mercy is not abstract. It listens. It responds. “In the day of distress I will call, and surely you will reply.”
How different this is from our own reflexes. We often struggle to forgive the small things: a careless word, a forgotten kindness, a minor slight. Yet God forgives the great and the small alike. The more we turn to Him in prayer, the more we are shaped by His mercy—becoming people who listen, who pardon, who lift up the poor and needy in our midst.
To pray this psalm is to ask not only for God’s mercy, but to become merciful. To be heard—and to learn how to hear. To be forgiven—and to learn how to forgive. For He alone is God, and His marvelous deeds begin in the quiet reply to a humble cry.
Smitten With Goodness 