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A Gentle Answers Turns Away Wrath©

by A. Lin. Thomas

 

Last summer, I was sitting in my bedroom, when screams erupted outside my window. As a mother, and grandmother, my first response is to jump up and check to make sure everyone is alright. When I glanced out the window, I noticed a little girl, about 11 or 12 years old, screaming to the top of her lungs. 

 

As she laid prostrate on the cement pavement, bawling her eyes out, she shouted hateful words of contempt. “I hate you!” she cried, as her little brother, who was about three years old, ran about frantically trying to escape her wrath. With tears now flowing uncontrollably from his little eyes, my heart began to sink. What is the problem? I wondered. Then she spoke, voice quivering, “You broke my cell phone.”

 

What? A cell phone prompted all that sorrow? Then it occurred to me, that one day, her little brother will probably become the very big brother—in size, that she may need, and she just shouted out hateful words that penetrated his soul. How can she take that back? It hurt my feelings, and I wasn’t even involved.

 

Some months after, while disciplining my grandson, I too, shouted out words in anger that I can't take back. Like that little boy outside my window who bore the hurtful effect of those verbal jabs, my grandson looked at me like I had just crushed his soul. We have since made up because I immediately apologized for the way I spoke to him, but not for disciplining him, because he needed it.

 

Sometimes, we lose control and let our anger over the situation rule over our good sense. But the Bible states, in Ecclesiastes 7:9 (NIV), “Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools.” 

 

“…because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.” (James 1:20, NIV)

 

“A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense.” (Prov. 19:11, KJV​).

 

So, to ensure that we don’t lose our cool, we should consider Prov. 29:11 (NLT), "Fools vent their anger, but the wise quietly hold it back."

 

We should also consider what if this had happened within our marriage?