Every morning I get mad. Every morning. Without fail.
And it’s not that I get mad at things my friends or family do to me. I
get mad at strangers -- people I don’t even know. Let me explain.
In the mornings when I leave my house, I come to an
intersection with a four-lane divided highway.
I have to turn right. There’s two
lanes, so this should be easy, right?
But, no. Invariably, when I pull
up to the stop sign, there’s always a car coming from my left, heading the same
way that I need to go. So, I watch and
wait for them to politely slide over into the vacant inner lane so I can turn
into the outer lane. That way, neither
of us has to wait on the other, and both of us get to our destinations as
quickly as possible. But, this never
happens.
For some reason, people don’t want to move. They’re in their lane. They’re happy there. So, it doesn’t matter to them if someone else
could be granted entry into the highway, perhaps someone who is already running
late to work and watching the seconds and minutes tick away as this car slowly
comes down the road in “my” lane, without any consideration or kindness. And, as I watch them drive by, I find myself
getting angry. How dare they? How dare they ignore me? Not consider my
plight? Think themselves better than me?
Every day. Every single day.
It reminds me of a Key and Poole comedy skit I saw one
time where they couldn’t get into a parking place at the store because someone
was sitting there, blocking traffic, while waiting for another car to back
out. When the car finally parked and
they could get by, they yelled out the window, “Selfish! You are selfish!” And I remember thinking, “That’s
right!”
So, every day, I find myself getting angry first thing in
the morning. And that anger carries on
with me throughout the day. It puts me
in a bad mood, affecting how I greet coworkers, how I do my job, how I respond
to others on my commute. I think about
how selfish that other person was, how inconsiderate they were, and it makes me
angry. How dare they ignore my
needs? How dare they not conform to my
wants and wishes?
Thinking on this, it makes me wonder just who the selfish
one truly is in this scenario. I was
reading a devotional about the martyred saints under the altar from Revelation
6:9-11:
Revelation 6:9-11 New International Version
(NIV)
9 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under
the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and
the testimony they had maintained. 10 They called out in a loud voice, “How
long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the
earth and avenge our blood?” 11 Then each of them was given a white robe, and
they were told to wait a little longer, until the full number of their fellow
servants, their brothers and sisters,[a] were killed just as they had been.
The devotional writer made this point, which really
struck home to me:
“In contrast to [the martyred saints under the throne],
we seem to care more about getting justice for the petty inequities we
suffer. A traffic ticket, a snide
remark, or an accusation of bad motives [or an “inconsiderate” driver] can set
us off on a holy crusade. How poorly
these causes compare to the cause [and true suffering and hurts] of these men
and women who had entrusted themselves to Jesus”
In his book, “Unoffendable,” Brant Hansen makes the point
that Christians should be different from those around us who are quick to take
offense at everything. The root of being
offended, he says, is selfishness.
Wanting our own way. Wanting
others to do what we want. And, when
that doesn’t happen, we become offended, indignant, angry. Sound familiar?
Sometimes, when we look into the mirror, we see someone
we don’t like, or, at least I do. I find
it curious that this same issue with drivers refusing to move over happens to
me almost every morning. It’s never the
same car twice. It’s always someone
different. But, it happens every time I
head to work. And, it’s not like I live
in a metropolitan area. There might be
one car every five minutes on this road at the time I leave for work. But, every time, they choose to stay in the
outer lane and keep me from pulling out, starting the chain reaction of anger
and irritation driven by my own selfishness.
Every morning. It’s
almost like Someone is trying to point out a flaw in my life. It’s almost like Someone is saying, “Here’s
an area of your life that you need to work on.
Here’s an area of your life where you are selfish and not loving.”
To quote Brant Hansen, “You can choose to be ‘unoffendable...’
It’s the taking of offense, and the very presumption that I’m somehow entitled
to be angry with someone, that I’m talking about...
“Not only can we choose to be unoffendable; we should choose
that. We should forfeit our right to be offended. That means forfeiting our
right to hold on to anger...Forfeiting our right to anger makes us deny
ourselves, and makes us others-centered. When we start living this way, it
changes everything.”
Selfishness. Being offended. Getting angry because I have been slighted --
“my” rights have been ignored. I’m
afraid it’s become a way of life for me.
Maybe for you, too. It is common,
after all. If you don’t believe me, just
check out any social media site and you’ll see what Brant is talking about.
My prayer for this week is that I become aware of these
opportunities to change. That I begin
realizing that these drivers who are “offending” me are actually the means of
grace God is using to touch me and change me.
My prayer is that I turn the selfishness around. That I learn patience and love. That I learn to live my life “unoffendable.” That I stop letting anger lead my day, and
let selflessness become an attribute I clothe myself with each morning.
It starts tomorrow at the stop sign.
Pastor Greg
1 comment:
Thank yyou for being you
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