Your Anger is a Demonstration of What You Love

Have you ever been so mad that you... ?

People do funny things when they are angry. They throw things and hit things and say things they will inevitably regret a short time later. I've known several "manly" men who have broken their hands, fingers and wrists because they punched a wall in anger.

Jesus once made a whip and attacked a group of store owners.

Does that mean it's okay to get angry?

In Ephesians, Paul wrote that we should be careful that in our anger we do not sin. We must never let our anger control us. Anger can be a very destructive force, and usually in the hands of humans it is a negative thing; yet Jesus' anger can actually tell us something about God's love.

Anger is often tied directly to love. If our dog Emily eats Liam's dinner while he's not watching he may or may not get angry. If dinner was my world famous spinach, hummus, and okra casserole; Liam will not get angry with the dog. He doesn't love that dish. But if dinner is bacon and tater tots, the dog better hide because the anger is coming. Liam loves bacon and he loves tater tots.

This can be a warning to us. Sometimes our anger reveals that we love the wrong things!

God's anger is directly tied to his love for us. Sin has nasty effects. Our sin and the sin of others ruins creation (notice that we are surrounded by disease, famine, natural disasters, death, etc.). More significantly, our sin separates us from God. Therefore God is angry about our sin, because He loves his creation (us) and He desires to be reconciled to us... That's why he sent Jesus!

And Jesus' anger in the temple (in John 2) was a demonstration of God's love for us. Jesus was not angry about the selling of animals for temple worship. This practice was necessary for travelers and the poor to be able to appropriately worship in the temple.

However, Jesus WAS angry about how and where the selling was happening. Instead of providing a service for worshipers, they were getting rich by exploiting the poor. Instead of enabling worship, they were creating a distraction for the Gentiles who hoped to worship in the outer courts.

Jesus was angry, because the Jews were abusing the Marginalized. (marginalized people are those who live in the "margins", separated in some way from the majority or the norm) It is often easy to take advantage of marginalized people because they are not protected.

Yet, Jesus cares about the marginalized. His anger in the temple was a demonstration of His love.

This raises two simple questions for you to consider today:

1. Do you love the marginalized? 

2. Do you realize that Jesus loves you?

Your Future Probably Won't Be the Way You Imagine It

This morning I was reading about Elijah and the widow at Zarephath. The basics of the story go like this:

• A great famine has spread across Israel
• God sends Elijah to Zarephath because he's prepared a widow to feed him
• The widow is down to her last food supplies, she's going to cook one more meal for herself and her son, then they plan to die
• Elijah tells her to cook the meal for him instead
• She does. God miraculously keeps her food supply from running out until the famine is over.

What I like particularly in this story is the initial interaction between Elijah and the widow. When he asks her to provide him with a meal, she replies, "As the LORD your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple sticks that I may go in and prepare it for my myself and my son, that we may eat it and die."

She's very matter-of-fact. "We're going to eat this last meal. And then we're going to starve to death." She's accepted the inevitable. She's come to grips with how this story is going to end. She's lost all hope.

But Elijah suggests that the story may not quite be over. He says, "The jar of flour shall not be spent and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the LORD sends rain upon the earth." In other words, he tells her that the story isn't going to end the way she thinks it is. God's agenda is different than hers.

As I mulled this story over this morning, I jotted down (yes, I jotted) four thoughts about God's agenda often being different than mine:

1. God always does that which will bring glory to Himself.
2. In bringing glory to Himself, God always does what is best for us and what will meet our needs.
3. God often works out His agenda in ways we might not expect.
4. God usually works out His agenda in timing we would not choose.

The story almost never ends the way we think it is going to. While we may not always have a Zarephath kind of moment (sometimes God's timing is vastly different than ours), we can rest and be comforted that whatever God is doing in the moment is intricately connected to what He will be doing in 5 weeks, 5 months, 5 years, even 5 decades.

Our hope is not in the expectation that we will get what we want in this moment, but rather our hope is that we will receive all that we need both now and in the days to come, but especially when our adoption is made complete at the end of time.