These last few days have been so frustrating! I sent in two grant applications that weren’t received so I have to start again, I had to wrestle with the copier and I lost, my bank messed up some automatic payments, our new secretary started and has to be trained (she is great but doesn’t know our particularities yet), and why is the water in my kitchen sink so slow? I am afraid to start anything for fear of the next disaster. And then there is Covid…
These are all first world problems. There are no impending natural disasters and my life is actually filled with good things. But the question I have been wrestling with is how this frustration at little things enflames the big things that are happening in the world. And if the little things are getting me mad, what would happen if there was a big thing?
I see the anger on the news each day. People protesting, people rioting. I read that 93% of all protests are peaceful, but they aren’t what we see covered by the media. We see the raw anger, we see people stirring up trouble. And we can all agree that destroying a small business doesn’t solve the problem.
However I have been wondering how I would respond if my child was murdered, or if my body was altered without my consent, or if my child was taken away from me for no reason. I would be furious. What would I do? What would you do?
It is easy to judge another’s anger, another’s rage. It is also easy to be scared by it. So much harder to try to sit for a moment in the desperation and extreme grief that would cause someone to legitimately lose control. (I am not talking about troublemakers trying to tarnish one side or another.)
Jesus got so mad he flipped the tables. Not every time he got mad. And that doesn’t make it right. But what would it take for me to flip the tables? What would it take for you? Maybe we need to open our hearts to that level of pain, just to try to understand. Maybe if we cared enough about why violence was happening, it wouldn’t be necessary.