For the wrath of man does not bring about the righteousness of God

It wasn’t until the third day after I was terminated when anger finally kicked in. All the anxiety, the sadness, the disappointment was washed away by a welcome wave of anger. How could they have been so unjust, so ungrateful? What my friends said was right. My termination was an outrage! Curiously, just a few hours later, I became the focus of an angry outburst.  What a kindness of the Lord to show me so quickly that anger, no matter how good it feels, is not the right response! 

My greatest shame is my temper. When I was in grade school, those of us who lived out in the country could not go home for lunch so we were on the playground for an hour and a half every day. A common diversion was figuring out the perfect recipe to produce the greatest outburst of temper. Name calling merely caused a kid to take a swing. A simple poem set to music and sung over and over again produced the best results. Even at an early age, I had gift for song writing. I sang in a quartet. But soon it was my turn. Tommy Barfield had a song for me. “Larry, Lady Larry, bum, bum, bum. There’s a mouse inside your diaper, bum, bum bum.” I personally thought his lyrics weak and his tune was unoriginal but everyone agreed that his results were impressive.  “You’re strangling him,” I heard people cry. “Get the teacher.” Tommy did live to tell the story of the totally uncontrollable Larry Rodgers who couldn’t take his own medicine.

My mother took as an object of faith that I was a delightful child. But when she and a neighbor lady were sitting on a back step as Roxy Chubalouski came running up to tattle on her brother and myself, and I grabbed a handful of Roxy’s hair and pulled so hard the whole handful of hair came out in my hand; a momentary shadow of doubt must have crossed her mind. 

Since we’ve been married, I have never lost my temper at my wife for which we are both most grateful. And it has been a long time since I’ve lost my temper. I’m sure this was not the last time, but my brother-in-law had this ridiculous idea that we should only sing hymns at Story Book because these choruses were so light hearted and superficial. My very good friend John Bjorlie was there adding his agreement. I was explaining very clearly and simply to them that not all hymns are great theology and not all choruses were about Kum Ba Ya –whoever he is. I was speaking softly but emphatically when Roxanne walked through the door and suddenly my tone was not quite so emphatic and I could feel my face was not quite so hot. My brother-in-law laughed. “Wow, you sure changed in a hurry.” 

I pray daily that this change would be permanent even when Roxanne is not around, for an evil temper is an evil testimony. When the world sees a Believer blow, that Believer loses all credibility. Solomon repeats over and over again the folly of anger: “It is the honor of a man to keep aloof from strife, but every fool will be quarreling; Make no friendship with a man given to anger lest you learn his ways and get caught up in his snare; A soft answer turns away wrath; A fool give full vent to his anger, but a wise man quietly holds it back.”

Paul writes that the works of the flesh include enmity, strife, fits of anger, dissentions, divisions.  The fruits of the spirit are gentleness, self control, peace, kindness.

For those who struggle with a fleshly temper like myself, who know it’s still lingering down there, not too far below the surface, here’s what I’ve learned:  

If you pay attention, you can sense when you are about to blow. At that time you should:

           1.    Take a deep breath.

           2.    Take another deep breath.

           3.    Remember the Lord loves you and the Lord is good and fair, and if there is justice to be served, you can trust Him to bring it about

 4.      Take one more deep breath.
 5.      Thank the Lord for having saved you and your loved ones from a shameful exhibition of foolishness.

“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which you have indeed been called.” Col 3:15 

random acts

Randomness is the god of secularism. Random is the Prime Mover, the source of all good. (Just look at nature.) The best kindnesses are random acts of kindness; kindness done without premeditation, without prejudice and with no expectation of return. 

I don’t know about you, but I don’t buy it. If you are a kind person, you think and plan and consult and research. My parents have come to the time in their lives where they need help. I went with them to their prayer meeting last night. The people at their chapel watch as my parents move about. They open doors for them, move out of their way, bring them items they might need. They always think to smile and make small talk. 

When my son was a teenager, he and a friend were fooling around at a church when his friend fell into an older lady and the lady fell and broke her hip. How devastating! Understandably she and her family were angry. They blamed my son for his carelessness and blamed us as parents for raising such a thoughtless child. My son from his earliest childhood days has had a special heart for older people. He was (and probably still is) heartbroken by this tragedy that was so random. If he had been thinking carefully, he would have observed when this older lady entered the room and he would have done what he could to redirect or desist his rambunctious foolery. But because randomness was not deliberately ordered, my son was a facilitator in a random act of tragedy.  

When I was in college, I did yard work for a lady when I pulled a weed from her garden that pulled up a hornets’ nest. Suddenly I was stung all over and every sting was excruciating and I thought, “What could possibly be the reason for this? It is just so random—and so painful.” If the hornets could reflect about what happened to their nest, they would have thought the same thing. 

The start of my big adventure seemed so random. From my (perhaps biased) perspective, nobody was quite so beneficial to the company as myself. Just before I was called in to the boss’ office I was looking at my pay stub online and thinking, “This company is definitely getting its money’s worth.”

But the Lord has been making good use of this time by teaching me about real trust and real sympathy. Each morning as I wake up, I do wonderful exercises in strengthening my trust muscles, muscles that had gotten way too flabby. And throughout each day the Lord shows me new mercies that are so unrandom and so kind. 

About an hour ago I learned that the corporate person who (I think) orchestrated my termination had been terminated himself. His termination did not seem random. David wrote: “They draw the sword and bend the bow to bring down the poor and the needy. But their swords will pierce their own heart and their bows will be broken.” Psalm 37:14

Then David writes: “The steps of a man are established by the Lord when he delights in His way. Though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong, for the Lord upholds his hand. I have been young, and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread (or for insulin, as the case might be). Psalm 37:25 & 26.

Thanks for your very helpful comments, Bruce Collins! We have already begun to see the Lord's special provision. Thanks Jan Olson, you have such a gift of mercy. I'm very privileged to be your brother-in-law, part of the Block family. John Messerly, please continue to comment, add to this random idea of mine. Stephie--my favorite cheerleader, thanks for your help with this blog 

Back to the basement

My dad sent us a letter graciously offering us the basement. “Your mother and I are elderly now and we would welcome you staying with us.” That was nice idea, but depressing. Lord willing, it won’t happen. But at this moment, I am back in their basement. My dad has gone off to work—where he volunteers four mornings a week, and I am home with my mother.

After a long illness several years back, followed by major surgery, my mother has needed lots of care.My father has been incredibly good to her. He's been doing all the household work and making all the meals. He plays Scrabble with her at least once a day and often once or twice in the middle of the night. My mom is not a strategic player, but her spelling and her vocabulary is where it has always been. My dad insists that he is delighted when she wins, but I know that’s not true.

I arrived at their place around 1:30 yesterday afternoon. They were dressed and waiting for me and I drove them to Perkins. At Perkins they have their own booth and waitress. The hostess greets them by name and tells them how good they look. The waitress does not bring them a menu for my mother always gets pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream, while my father always gets eggs, sausage, hash browns and pancakes. My mother is not zippy, so as they are moving to their booth, the waitress already has their foreordained raspberry iced tea on their table. My dad tells me this is his treat and I can get anything I want. He then hands me a coupon booklet showing me what is on sale. I get the cheeseburger special, and even though I have already asked for water, the special includes a coke and fries. “He will have a coke also,” my dad instructs the waitress. My dad is better than a GPS in giving me driving directions. Not only does he tell me where to turn but when to get into which lane, when to slow down and when to turn on my turn signal.

This hasn’t changed much from when I was a kid. My dad took care of things. Every day he would wake me up, find my homework assignment and put my shoes by the front door. For church on Sunday, I would usually be reading something and my reading would be only interrupted when it was time to step out the car and into the church. Frequently my father would pick up somebody on the way to church. I remember one really nice girl who we picked up, but who I finally met after she got her own car. “Oh, I remember you,” I said to her. “You’re the girl my parents used to pick up.” “For about a year,” she told me.

When we got home from Perkins we all played Scrabble. My dad kept making sure my mother had her full seven letters on her tray. I won. I usually win but my father notes that I get all the letters that have more than one point on them. My dad and I took a walk to the grocery store. The hills are steep in his neighborhood. “This is a really hard hill for me,” he told me while his breathing barely increased. It had bothered him at age 86, his energy was beginning to wane. “I must have had a virus or something because now I am back to my 3 miles a each day.”

My father’s life has always been defined by faithfulness. Always, if there is a job that needs to be done, he is quick to do it. He retired from teaching grade school at age 62. Then, for 20 years, he was a full-time volunteer at Emmaus Bible College where he worked as the assistant to the president Dan Smith. He did any number of jobs, most of which related to mailing one thing or another. For the past ten years he has been ly taking care of mailings for my sister’s family’s organization called Bright Lights. For about three decades he came up to Story Book for the two family camps each summer where he did all the pots and pans and led the men’s afternoon discussion. Though my father has a near photographic intelligence, he has never been drawn to jobs that offer much status. Steadiness has been his gift, a very well practiced gift most beautifully manifested in the care of my mother.

The Thing About Prayer

You never know exactly what you’ll get when you ask for it in prayer. The Lord Jesus said we can be guaranteed of not getting a scorpion if we ask for an egg, or a serpent if we ask for a fish. But what do you get when you pray about a wayward child or difficult job? For our son, my wife and I actually added fasting to our prayers. All day long while my stomach gnawed at me, I wondered if it was such a good idea. I wondered if fasting was like a Catholic thing like wearing a hair t-shirt or crawling on one’s knees up the steps of St. Peter’s church. I wondered if maybe it was like holding your breath till you got God to do what you wanted. Not too long later, our son broke his neck. He wore a steel halo for about 16 weeks and he went through two major surgeries. He has a two inch titanium screw in his neck which gets awfully cold when the temperatures dip much below zero. But the break did not seem to have any significant long term effect on him either physically or spiritually. The Lord did get through to him about eight years later. Had I been praying for him then? Yes, but the prayer had become one of those items on the list that we always prayed for.

My job had become overwhelming. Before I could clock in, there would be three people waiting to talk with me. The company had centralized several customer service procedures. They made a mess of things and they never cleaned up their mess. I was on call 24/7. And it seemed like every day, some new duty landed on my desk. I prayed, “Lord, you have to help me with my job. I pleaded with my friends, “Pray for my job.” And then I got fired.

I do appreciate the answer to my prayer. Unlike David in Psalm 35 I do not complain: “How long O Lord, How long will you just look on? You have seen O Lord, be not silent.” But though now my stress from my job is gone, curiously, I still have a bit of stress. So I’m praying, “Now what?” I am praying hopefully. I expect an answer soon and I know it will be a good answer. One thing I’m pretty sure of, the answer will be other than I expect.

Terminated

After nearly 32 years of employment, I was terminated from the Mesabi Daily News as their Circulation Director. Newspapers are in decline. The company that owns our newspaper went into receivership approximately five years ago. The financial groups that have taken on this debt have been trying to make our company saleable, but to date, without success. A year ago last March, I was told my Circulation Director job was being absorbed into a central directorship in Maryland. But for some reason, it was not until this December that the corporation decided to use an opportunity to terminate me, and I was fired on January 9.

Roxanne and I and our family have been greatly blessed throughout our lives together. We have had it pretty easy (though our son David did break his neck a few years back). When I told camp Treasurer Tom Messerly about my termination he said, "Oh, Larry, I’m so sorry. I feel so bad for you." His heartfelt sympathy was a deeply felt balm. "Weep with those who weep," Paul instructs us in Romans.

A dominant theme throughout Scripture is suffering. The Lord Jesus tells us, “In this world you will have tribulations.” The writer of Proverbs says, “A man is born to trouble as sparks fly upward.” Peter admonishes us, “not to be surprised when you are encountered with fiery trials as if something strange were happening to you.”

Paul introduces his second letter to the Corinthians with, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions so we may be able to comfort those who are in affliction with the comfort that we ourselves are comforted.”

Getting terminated by the Mesabi Daily News seemed like an awful long process. For a reason discernible only to our newly hired Human Resources Director, I was dangled out on the high wire for about three weeks. I begin every day in the Scriptures. I would read Psalm 37: Fret not yourself… trust in the Lord and do good. Fret not yourself and refrain from anger. Fret not yourself, it only leads to evil. In just a little while the meek inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace.” And my fretting would come to an end…for just a little while; then slowly, waves of anxiety would come over me.

I think I understand that in the whole scheme of things, getting fired at 58 years old is a fairly inconsequential. But I know I understand how best to respond the next time I hear of someone getting fired, or sick, or losing a loved one, or any of a number of the things that are so common to us as humans.  I will sincerely say like my good friend Tom, “I’m so sorry. I feel so bad for you.”