Thursday,
February 16, 2023
Why are the nations so angry? Psalm
2:1
My mother was not a person prone to anger. I can only recall seeing her lose it one time, when my dog ate the ingredients for a cake she was going to make for an upcoming birthday. He only ate the sugar, frosting, and butter; he spread the flour all around the kitchen…every nook and cranny; it was the Pillsbury cloud! Come to think of it, that was also the time I heard the only cuss word ever to drop from her lips! She chased my dog around the house with that big wooden spoon. She never caught him…probably a good thing; if she had caught-up with the beast it might have completed the deadly sins triple-crown: anger, cussing, and murder!
The decades which followed World War II were, for me, was what it was
like to live in Andy Griffith’s world, with Aunt Bea, Barney Fife, Gomer Pile,
and Opie. My summer days were spent exploring
Miller’s woods, playing with frogs, and swimming at Stump Pond with the
snapping turtles. We rode bikes, and
played “cowboys and Indians”.
Interpersonal relationships were light
years different than currently.
If a boy got a little flustered and dropped a “bad word” (anything
stronger than darn), especially in front of a girl child or two, culture
demanded an immediate apology. Sex was
only mentioned in school while dissecting frogs in Science class. The internet of today may have developed its’
lightning-fast information-sharing from the way inappropriate behavior at
school reached a child’s mother and dad before you got off the bus that
afternoon.
As gentle and non-violent as my Mom
was 99.99% of the days of her life, she would have stood out like a sore thumb
in today’s culture. Today’s foulness of
language and angry in-your-face, stay-out-of-my-space, while I act out my
sexual preferences for all the world to see on Instagram and Face Book,
is the perfect medium for developing the attitude that, no suppressed wish to
grab a gun and obliterate those who have angered you, will go unchecked. The tantrum of an undeveloped sense of self-control
is punctuated by the sound of semi-automatic gunfire. And the weeping of Godly-grieving over this
angry world is faintly heard from above.
For You Today
…we want you to know what will happen to the
believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no
hope. For the Lord himself will come
down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, and
with the trumpet call of God. First, the
believers who have died will rise from their graves. Then,
together with them, we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be
caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Then we will be with the
Lord forever. So encourage each other with these words. 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17
There are about 2,000 devotional
posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions
library. To dig deeper on
today’s topic, explore some of these:
Advice for the Mighty and Now Then, You Kings, Act Wisely and
Short
Fuse and So
Much Anger
Images: Title Pixabay.com Images without citation are either personal
property of the author, or in public domain.
Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
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