"Doesn’t that just drive you crazy?"

"Who does he think he is?"

"She is on my last nerve!"

"I have had it up to here!"

The vocabulary we hear day to day is filled with phrases to express anger.  Even angry music is popular, and it seems even more angry now than it was in the past.  Anger is everywhere, and it can easily become part of our daily attitude. 

Most everyone experiences some anger, whether outward yelling and fighting, or an under your breath comment, or festering anger that leads to bitterness.  Since we live in this imperfect, fallen world, there are so many things that can cause one to be angry, either rightly so or not.  The responsibility we have is to determine if the anger is righteous anger or if it’s sinful anger. 

An example comes from the life of Moses in Exodus 32.  When Moses returns after receiving the Ten Commandments, he sees his people worshipping the calf, he burns with anger.  At this point, the anger seems righteous, but what happens next, when Moses reacts, is where the problem lies.  At this time, Moses makes a split second decision to allow his anger to overtake him and he throws the tablets – the works and writings of God himself – to the ground to shatter in many pieces.

Based on the increasing presence of anger in our daily lives, I hope we can look at this story and see that in this situation and in many in our lives, we can keep the anger from being a destructive force, but channel it for positive.  If Moses hadn’t thrown the tablets, but used his righteous anger to communicate, he could have possibly communicated the problem without destroying the work of the Lord.  We will encounter anger in this life, but we do not have to let it destroy us or those we come in contact with.