"Mad"

Go on into neutral,

Step back and detach,

Get yourself some distance,

And try a break to catch.

Try to be objective,

Don’t let ‘em get to you,

‘Cause if it gets too personal,

You know what you might do.

You’ll say the thing you used to say,

When they hit a nerve,

And then more harm than any good,

Comes from that old curve.

Get a grip, shut that lip,

And breathe and decompress,

Anger is the devil’s tool,

So don’t be like the rest.

Who never learn to let it go,

They always press their point,

Have to prove that they are right,

And bent plumb out of joint,

The Good Book says by sundown,

We get our anger gone,

Else sleepin’ with the enemy,

The night will sure get long.

Slow to let them anger us,

Quick to make it stop,

Careful to say nothing,

Let no foul word drop.

And life will be much better,

If our anger we control,

With the Good Lord helping,

To keep a healthy soul.

“And don’t sin by letting anger control you. Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry, for anger gives a foothold to the devil…” (Ephesians 4:26-27, NLT)

The Bible consistently warns us about letting anger control us. Getting angry is not such a big deal. Staying angry is what becomes spiritually dangerous. It’s going to invariably happen, but what we do about it matters the most. Paul writes we should deal with it by sundown. The assumption is that we do not drag into everyday the anger from the past. We are able to deal with it one day at a time, by the grace of God. If we don’t, anger quickly turns to bitterness and a tool of the enemy to use against us.

Lord, deliver us from anger, in Jesus’ name.

Art by Herman Walker, hermanwalker.com. Used by permission. Thanks, Herman, and God bless you.