Grace is when I get what I haven’t earned.
Mercy is when I don’t get what I deserve.
Grace is when I wake up in the early morn,
And hear the birds sing and calm every nerve.

Mercy is when I haven’t lost another friend
By operating my mouth without a caring thought.
Being given a new beginning instead of a sorry end.
When I have no regrets for not doing what I ought.

Grace is sitting in the beauty of a valley,
Looking up at the hills covered with summer browning.
Knowing that they are not hills at all
But are at the edge of a prairie with wheat fields growing.

Mercy lies in the real life fact
I could not hear the birds and their beautiful singing.
Without a stranger performing the act
That constructed the aids to give me my hearing.

Then I was able to see the hills so beautifully glowing
With the white-capped Snake River so gorgeous and vital.
Mercy then provided a surgeon capable and knowing
To remove cataracts giving me vision clear and total.

I have Mercy and Grace beyond my deserving.
There is vision and hearing when both were gone.
My Spirit with gratitude doth both pray and sing,
To the Love of the Universe that goes on and on.

James L. A. Huetson

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/grace-and-mercy/