Good Morning My Friends!
Monday morning, a new day has begun. Let us encourage one another to refrain from anger today and instead embrace compassion.
No to Anger, Yes to Compassion!
Today, we have two Bible verses to guide us:
“My dearly loved brothers, understand this: Everyone must be…slow to anger.” (James 1:19, HCSB).
“Therefore, God’s chosen ones, holy and loved, put on heartfelt compassion.” (Colossians 3:12, HCSB).
For my weekly Bible study at church, we’re studying how to discern the voice of God. Today’s lesson is “God Revealing.” He sure does!
What He revealed to me today is how very compassionate He is and at the same time He’s very slow to anger. Think snail pace when thinking of how slow God is to become angry. That’s what He wants us to be today. Snail-paced anger or better yet, no anger.
I like to dig in a little deeper to understand God’s Word so that I can, well, be able to do live it intentionally. This morning was no different.
Have you ever taken time to unpack the deeper meaning of common words we use? I do this on a regular basis.
So today, once again, I got my big red Webster collegiate dictionary out, and I looked up two words: anger and compassion. Here’s what I discovered:
Anger is an emotional state induced by displeasure. Anger is the most general term used to convey this emotional state, but it doesn’t tell us about the intensity of the emotion.
So of course, I had to do a little more searching and oh my, did I quickly learn a greater understanding.
Interestingly, my big red dictionary referenced a Scripture about Moses. God gave Moses the Ten Commandments on stone tablets, but when Moses came back down the mountain and approached the camp, he couldn’t believe his eyes. He saw his people, worshipping a golden calf and dancing all around it.
Now, if I said “Moses was angry” that would convey one message, but here’s what I learned from three different versions of the Bible used to clarify the intensity of Moses’ emotion:
- his angered burned (NIV)
- Moses’ anger burned hot (ESV)
- Moses became enraged (HCSB)
Now, that explains a little more intensity doesn’t it? To have an emotional state of displeasure that causes one to burn hot, well, I’d say that person isn’t just angry, he’s full of fury.
In fact, we can know how mad Moses was by his behavior. He threw the tablets of stone with the Ten Commandments down on the ground, and they smashed all over the ground.
However Moses’ anger was justified because of that event happening, often ours is not justified.
Nevertheless, I noticed something else in today’s lesson. God brought Moses back up the mountain because He had something to reveal to Moses:
And He passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6, NIV).
The Lord Himself is compassionate. That was the first thing He revealed to Moses.
Then I looked up compassion in my big red dictionary. I learned two things about compassion:
- compassion is being sympathetic of others’ distress and
- compassion is having a desire to relieve or lesson their distress
It’s both/and kind-of-thing.
So if God wants us to be like Him, and embrace His character, it means we need to be very slow to become burning hot because He wants us to sympathize with our fellow humans and embrace a desire to relieve their distress.
Now your fellow human today may be a coworker, a boss in fact, or maybe your spouse, a next door neighbor, the salesclerk at a store, or even your child or children in your care. Regardless who it is, rather than being seduced to burning hot anger where you may just smash something or someone, how about sympathize with that person and help lessen his or her distress instead.
Just For Today
Refrain from Anger. Embrace Compassion!
Leave a Reply