Put On Love

I have learned and I know and believe that emotions are neither good nor bad.  I also know that I have very little control over the emotions that I feel.  I feel what I feel.  When I stuff down my feelings and don't let myself have emotions, when I tell myself that the emotion is bad or wrong and I shouldn't feel it, then I suffer.

If the emotion is joy or love or happiness then full and exuberant expression of the emotion is easy and happy.  But sometimes the emotion I feel is anger.  Anger is tricky.  Because anger gets stuffed down a lot as an unworthy emotion, when it rears its ugly head it come out in a disporportionate manner to the thing that caused the anger in the current situation.  All the unexpressed anger sometimes comes out at the current situation, instead of anger fitting the immediate setting.

In Matthew 5:21-  Jesus says some things about anger. "But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgement."  Jesus goes on to teach reconciliation with a brother who has something against me.  Toward the end of the chapter Jesus urges me to love my enemies and to pray for those who persecute me.  He ends with this, "Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect."

This is the thing about anger that I think I have learned or that I am trying to learn--be angry at the situation, not the person.  Be meek and forgiving, strive for that, because that is putting on the perfection that Jesus is calling me to.

I lay the anger and the situation and the other person, if they are angry with me, at the foot of the Cross.  I give them to Christ. I turn my mind to perfection, to God.  I have found that praying or singing a spiritual song can turn my mind away from anger.

As it says in Ephesians 4:26--"Be angry, but do not sin." And as it says in Colossians 3:14-15--"And over all these put on love, that is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body. And be thankful."