June 17

“Know this, my beloved brethren. Let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God.”

Anger is an easy emotion to feel and to express. Often I catch myself using anger to communicate what I want because it requires little effort. Acts of anger can be committed in haste when we experience something unwanted or unexpected. It’s no surprise that the greater your involvement with something, the stronger an opinion becomes, and so anger becomes easy to justify. But when the aftershocks come, we immediately know that the original problem has been augmented. More ill will has been created that will take even longer to resolve. When God speaks to us through the actions of others, we must listen attentively, even if we don’t like what is being said. God created all people in this world, and to feel anger toward another is to feel anger toward God. How difficult it is for us to pray for those whose actions we neither understand nor approve! Certainly there must have been times when Jesus felt the same way about men here on Earth.

DEAR HEAVENLY FATHER, WE CONFESS THAT WE ARE QUICK TO ANGER AND TO SPEAK BUT SLOW TO LISTEN, LET BOTH OUR EARS AND HEARTS BE OPEN SO THAT WE MAY DO YOUR WILL HERE ON EARTH. AMEN.

-Shared by Neil McDaniel