Forward Day by Day
a word from Ephesians about what we are doing for one another...
Ephesians 4:25-5:2. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.
Anyone who says that anger is un-Christian or unspiritual has never read the Bible. Anger may be one of the seven deadly sins, but nearly everyone in scripture--from God, to the patriarchs, the kings, the psalmists and the prophets, Peter, Paul, and even Jesus himself--gets angry. There's righteous anger, indignant anger, wrathful anger, vengeful anger. There's the anger of betrayal, the anger of deceit, and the anger of a broken heart. It's all there, every kind of anger imaginable. And those who are angry often wish some awful things on the objects of their wrath: read Psalm 109 or Galatians 5:12. Let's face it; one of the universal human experiences is anger.
So where is the sin? Sin enters when we let our anger fester, when we enjoy it, when we are unwilling to resolve it. Sometimes this resolution requires sacrifice. Sometimes it requires humility and forgiveness. Sometimes it requires hard work. What it always requires is God's help.
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We belong to a generation that wants to see the results of our work. We want to be productive and see with our own eyes what we have made. But that is not the way of God's Kingdom. Often our witness for God does not lead to tangible results. Jesus himself died as a failure on a cross. There was no success there to be proud of. Still, the fruitfulness of Jesus' life is beyond any human measure. As faithful witnesses of Jesus we have to trust that our lives too will be fruitful, even though we cannot see their fruit. The fruit of our lives may be visible only to those who live after us.