VERSE:
“BE YE ANGRY, AND SIN NOT: LET NOT THE SUN GO DOWN UPON YOUR WRATH: NEITHER GIVE PLACE TO THE DEVIL. ”
Ephesians 4:26-27
REFLECTION:
Apostle Paul’s “double-edged-sword-piercing” homily to the believers in Ephesus is clean-cut holds true especially to this very day that not all anger is sin, (Fact: we don’t equate anger with righteousness but even as to the account when Jesus overthrew the tables that made the temple as the den of thieves (Matt. 21:12) in the New Testament.) but believers should not remain angry as this will only give the Devil the opportunity drawing you to his snare and provoke to wickedness. Righteous indignation hence it’s called.
I rightly remembered when I was erupted like volcano (and still with flaming lava overflowing in my heart each time I have recollection of the event) when I was deprived of seeing my son for the past 8 years from the very supposed trusted person I could rely on, his mother. At the most unexpected 180 degrees turn of event mainly machined by selfish decision and circumstances. At the thunderbolt lightning speed as having an impending anaphylactic attack as I consumed and succumbed into the tornado of betrayal, contempt, madness, injustice, deprivation and incapacitation. Took me in between fleeting and eternal trance of time, finding myself afloat in driftwood but a certain voice excerpt in1 Kings 3:16–28 recounts that two mothers living in the same house, each the mother of an infant son, came to Solomon. A divine gift of suffering that strengthened my whole sanity and being as a father in particular for my son growing adorably and humbly in faith. Let it be the tears of longing and sweat of suffering of a father for the taste of dew and honey each time his son awake each morning.
Jesus Christ’s flipping over the tables of the temple was rather the “cleansing” of our undeserved, tainted, selfish and lustful heart for us to enter the holiness of His kingdom, as His body…Church. Hallelujah
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While there is such a thing as righteous indignation, times when we ought to be angry, ungodly anger is sin and gives the Devil a foothold in our heart and life. Even like a beachhead must first be secured by an army invading by sea, before a land can be conquered, even so the Devil must have some space from which to conduct his assaults. When we deny him that “place” or “foothold” he cannot overcome us.
PRAYER:
O ABBA FATHER, let not anger lead us to sin. Let it not create a foothold for the Devil in us. Let us not go to sleep at night without such anger being already quenched and dealt with. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the powers of darkness that rule this fallen world; let not our anger be focused on men but against our true enemies: the world, the flesh and the Devil. In Jesus mighty name, AMEN.
