In my last blog I started a series on anger and the sense of being dispirited or depressed that can be caused by unresolved anger, as a example I looked at 2 Sam 6-8 and how David had got angry with God and reacted to that anger rather than responded.
Not all anger is wrong the Bible say, “Be angry but do not sin” Eph 4:26. There are something’s we should be angry about; when we hear there are 10,000 child prostitutes in the world we should be angry, to greet such news with a sense of bland passivity is inappropriate, why are we angry at that? Because we care, because we love. God gets angry he’s never flying of the handle and never out of control but his wrath is a sign of his love. Why does God get stirred with us sometimes? Its because he cares about us so much.
I would like to suggest we can bring our anger into our relationship with God, if you don’t believe that read the Psalms repeatably the Psalmists say to God why? How long? Where are you? I’m not suggesting an attitude of disrespect towards God but lets be honest with him. How often are our prayers more like speeches all well thought out and oh so polite? But God knows whets in our hearts. Sometimes in the variety of the expressions of what we feel in our relationship with God our anger can be expressed, anger will invariably demand that we trust God you might not like what happens in the passage 2 Sam 4-6. It may seem hard to understand why Uzzah was struck down; you might not like it, I don’t! Surely he was just trying to help out, to steady the cart why would this happen. I could give you all the usual reasons Bible scholars and commentators reasons. Uzzah was probably raised as a Priest and he should have known better, some commentators say the Hebrew word used in the passage implies great disrespect in what Uzzah did, I could point you to Exodus 24 and 27 where it talks about only ever carrying the Ark on the shoulders of Priests, they should never have put it on a cart. It doesn’t matter how many reasons I can give you I still don’t like it, helpfully God isn’t nervous about my displeasure I don’t understand everything but that doesn’t mean I can’t trust God Anyway.
To be continued.
